Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers

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The Two Towers continues to follow the fortunes of the members of the now divided fellowship, with Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John-Rhys Davies) helping to restore some order to the land of King Theodon (Bernard Hill), whose mind has been poisoned by the machinations of Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif). Wormtongue is a secret emissary of wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee), now ready to unleash his army of the night on Middle-Earth.

Meanwhile, Frodo (Elijah Wood) is falling deeper under the dreaded influence of The Ring, as he journeys with Sam (Sean Astin) towards Mordor, and fellow Hobbits Merry and Pippin encounter the Ent Treebeard, an ancient tree-shepherd. With the addition of the extraordinary Gollum (Andy Serkis), the return of Gandalf, and a steady build up to the brilliantly staged rain-soaked night time battle of Helm's Deep, Peter Jackson's The Two Towers is every bit as exciting and wondrous as The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Two Towers is a fantastic epic, going farther than its predecessor "The Fellowship of the Ring" in much the same way as James Cameron's "Aliens" went beyond Ridley Scott's "Alien": in both cases, the continuations have more action, more baddies, more terror, but without detracting from the pleasures of the first movies in the series.