wow. most of you have given the incorrect answer. the correct answer is The Two Towers. lol. but srsly, it's really hard to pick any of them as best, but imo Peter Jackson ultimately succeeds the most in finding a story with the middle book, the hardest part of any trilogy. anyone that has read the books, knows that he deviates the most from the source material with The Two Towers. the movie has three stories going on at once, the Frodo-Sam portion is significantly truncated, and then there is also a terrific Gandalf story arc. his character goes full circle from 'death' in the movie's intro to his 'redemption,' providing lots of fodder for Christian allegory nuts. the great battle scenes also sell it for me. in the end, though, it's hard to pick any of the movies over the other. filming them all at once was genius, since it kept the quality relatively consistent.