Excellent script, with a delightful fantasy premise, and a couple of outstanding performances to drive it home. Sorry, but the director is not the primary creator. Criterion presumably exists to package excellent movies, not designate auteurs.

1) If all the Irish are loyal subjects of the King, then the partition was just a political arrangement. If Irish are not, the partition was the English keeping as much of their conquest as they can. Or to put it another way, taking the oath meant symbolically accepting the King's final authority…which first and…

The oath to the King is the symbolic form of the partition.

The partition was probably the main cause of the civil war. Any argument, like yours, premised on the notion it was a response to Dublin's new government, is nonsense. De Valera was indeed one of the most sectarian leaders, and he was the leader of the opposition in the civil war. Realizing that the partition…

What you're talking about is the way Ireland was partitioned into Roman Catholic and Protestant (mostly, though less and less as time goes by.) Sure, if you take out all the Protestants you make it much harder to have a secular republic. But it was the English who were responsible for the division. Trying to blame the…

I think it's a hint to people who don't like lefty politics that Loach isn't doing something apolitical, therefore it's not to be watched.

Seriously glossing over Roman Catholic fanatics who, very peculiarly, don't follow the Church's lead doesn't make sound criticism I think. And it's really doubtful there were very many who really had a program of removal/genocide, the way this hints. Especially since both Protestant and Catholic Irish worked together…

No, Frodo tries to take the Ring for himself. It's Gollum/Smeagol who throws the Ring into the fire. Frodo's earlier mercy towards Gollum/Smeagol is what permits this, but that's not heroic in the standard heroic fantasy meaning of the word. In pursuit of your false thesis, you just falsified the events of the movie.…

Willow goes out to be a hero, and hopes to become a magician. He succeeds magnificently. Frodo is not only a reluctant hero, he personally fails at the end. And he dies too. You can't actually read Lord of the Rings and think these are the same story.

Willow didn't just want to be a hero, and a magician, he was heroic from the start. That makes it completely opposite to Lord of the Ring's hobbits.
Cute little people isn't a premise.

Willow was not a Lord of the Rings rip-off. Makes you wonder about the perceptiveness of the rest of the review.

If you mean, in other words, "Nobody likes to do a book report, especially on a book they liked!" I have to agree. And who enjoys writing negative book reports so much it makes up for having to have read something you didn't like?

Whew! Dodged a bullet!

Robinson Crusoe is remembered in spite of English teachers, who've only tolerated it as a concession, allowing a book people generally liked to read. It is only in recent decades when savage conformism to simple grammar and short sentences became the rule.

I thought a cosine was a graph of the derivative of the sine wave. Time to worry about early Alzheimer's, I guess.

Just true enough to be hilarious!

Cheating only makes sense if you're playing for money or your life. Winning the game for itself is about, well, playing the game, i.e., following the rules.

As you say, Lily is "less a character." So there's no two characters to have a dynamic to misread.

If those guys weren't Muslims, putting a bunch of extras who would get profiled at an airport makes no sense.

If the dude wasn't healed, why does he look healthier than me?