Nice movie blog! 
I'll have to see Evelyn. I had no idea what it was about until now.
"Bead-squeezers." Heh heh heh.
I agree that the religious figures portrayed were, with the exception of the one abusive nun, sympathetic. But this is to compensate for the fact that the film was about an abusive system where church and state colluded to control family life and child rearing in a way that violated the natural rights of the family. Roeper's point still stands - overall this movie portrays Catholicism negatively. The fact that this critique is fair and historically accurate (as was the even more disturbing Magdalene Sisters from all accounts), while The Order or Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys contain inaccurate and unfair attacks, doesn't change the point: more Hollywood movies are made containing negative portrayals of Catholicism than of any other religious or cultural group (to the point, post 9-11, that novels about Middle Eastern Islamic terrorism are made into movies where the villains are changed to neo-Nazis or rogue Russian generals).
Mark:
Good points on the overall negative portrayals of Catholicism, none of which I come close to disagreeing with. I'm still waiting for the unambiguous Islamic terrorist villain. Even the second season of "24" refused to do that.
I guess I just find "Evelyn" to be weak support--if anything, Beresford and the script writer pulled punches, and made the state bureaucrats and judges come across worse than the church figures--with that one exception. And none of the bureaucrats is remotely as decent as the good nun and priest. Yes, it was clear that the Church and the Irish government were hand in glove, but the state came across as much more villainous.
I'm not much of a Roeper fan, but I think his point more or less is that the film industry sustains none of the fear and trembling that accompany its critical non-approach to third-rail subjects, keyword=Islam or keyword=Jew, even so far as to show the good with the bad.
I thought his film-festival analogy was powerful.
Roeper doesn't mention Mystic River. In the film version, it is made very obvious that one of the two molesters is a priest (although not wearing a Roman collar--maybe they thought that would be too on-the-nose). The book on which the movie is based does not suggest that either of the kidnappers/molesters were priests (or for that matter, even Catholic).
It was a gratuitous cheap shot in a move that was otherwise very well made.
D'ya suppose that there might have been an outcry if one of the molesters was shown wearing a yarmulke and Star of David?
Anti-Catholicism remains the last acceptable prejudice.
"I'm still waiting for the unambiguous Islamic terrorist villain."
You mean post 9/11? True Lies did a pretty good job of it, but it was pre 9/11 (and even then, had to be sure the terrorist got his "you blow our women and children up" moment in).
Evelyn is a terrific film but what Roeper missed is that Ireland at that time (like Canada and probably other European countries) had secular and religious laws all intertwined.
Plus Evelyn took place back in the late 50s or early 60s judging by the scenery and I remember well the problems my own father had when he fought a long and nasty custody battle to obtain custody of my brother, sister and me - and this was in the mid 70s. My mother was an awful mother and the courts still did not want to grant custody to a father. And this was in even then liberal Massachusetts. The courts are biased towards mothers - rightly or wrongly.
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