Well I admit that I have never watched a movie and paid much attention to the difference between long, medium and close up shots. As a consequence the only ones that have made an impression on me is the really obvious changes between them. The best example is in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
The one sequence I remember best is the battle for the city of Minas Tirith in Return of the King. During the battle they had extreme long shots to very close in shots.
For instance multiple times the camera would zoom out and show the entire battlefield and the armies on it. This shot served to give the viewers a sense of a giant battle happening as well as highlight the differences of the armies; Mordor huge and cloaked in darkness, and the humans in bright armor.
The camera would zoom in more for a detailed medium shot after this normally. this served the purpose of showing the viewer more details of the unfolding battle; who was winning. It also allows us to track our heroes as they perform their heroic deeds while still allowing us to see some of the general battle. You could see Gandalf killing the evil orcs but still see that there were many more behind them.
Finally the camera would zoom close up and give us a better idea of what our heroes were feeling at that moment. You could see the loss of hope from the individual human soldiers during their final stand, the determination of the cavalry riding in to save the day and Aragorn's confidence when he appeared leading the army of the dead. The close-ups reminded us that the heroes we were watching in battle had emotions we could relate to, or in the case of the orcs, that they were evil and vicious.
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