I see LOTR as very, very English. Tolkien feels those landscapes on his pulses. Jackson's landscapes are spectacular, but they're not felt in the same deep way. Besides, they're New Zealand landscapes, not English ones.

I would argue (gently, of course) that your Englishness may leave you less than perfectly sensitive to Jackson's deep feeling for his own landscape. I am not at all convinced that Tolkien's LOTR landscape remains English once the scene leaves the Shire (and possibly Bree). I agree that it would have been nice of the Shire had had a larger nod toward England.