I loved most of the changes in Fellowship; but that was always the least cohesive and most tangled of the stories, not quite sure what it wanted to be.

I particularly loved the small touches; Boromir teaching the hobbits to use their swords, for example, helped make him a much more sympathetic and tragic figure than Tolkien did.

From Two Towers on the changes became considerably less good though; throwing out much of the plot incolving Saruman in favour of an invented-out-of-whole-cloth side quest for Aragorn was a terrible decision and, as you say, the changes to Faramir were appalling.

One positive, though, was emphasising the point that Frodo failed and the ring was destroyed by chance? That was good, because it was a key moral point Tolkien wished to make.