I saw The Return of the King last night, and it was, indeed, amazing. I am not going to harp on the strangeness of the softcore gay laughing orgy that followed Sam and Frodo's terribly romantic moment on the rock in the middle of the flowing lava and explosions and whatnot. And I'm not going to complain too much about Sam's pathetic attempt to assert his heterosexuality by marrying some floozy bartender when he should have been following Frodo off to the West with a cock ring and a twelve-pack of condoms in his pocket.

And I'm not going to write a letter to the New York Times about the horrendous sexism of this review, which is totally in keeping with their current trend towards retro misogyny. No, the fact that a woman wrote it does not make it okay.

Here's my main question: What does it mean that Gollum almost attained redemption in the second film, but then, well, just didn't? What are we supposed to learn from that? And how come Gollum gets burnt up in molten lava, but Frodo gets to go off to happy elf-land, even though when push came to shove they were both fighting over the ring, and either one of them would have kept it if they could?

While you're answering that one for me, here is a short list of my favorite things about this movie. I am going to watch it again, and I will probably come up with more.

1. The Steward of Gondor. There's nothing like a good Shakespearean-type madman, and also the part where he is eating and Pippin is singing and the army is riding off to their inevitable death was so heartbreaking and perfect.

2. Sam and Frodo's unspoken love. Hot.

3. I was very impressed by the special effects, especially the Evil Elephants and various shots of buildings falling apart which reminded me of this short film on pleix.net.