Abby Olcese (@abbyolcese) has been many things — a campus ministry leader at the University of Kansas, an English teacher in Prague, and an advertising assistant at Sojourners. These days, she’s a freelance writer based in Kansas.
Raised on a diet of Narnia, Bob Dylan records and Terry Gilliam movies, Abby is drawn to the weird, the nerdy, and the profoundly artsy corners of popular culture. She loves sharing this knowledge with others by writing about interesting new releases as well as lesser-known gems.
Abby is also passionate about the intersection of faith, social responsibility, and culture. She believes in the power of art to spark important conversations, inspire social change, and help people to better understand life in the kingdom of God.
When she’s not watching movies or writing things down, you can usually find Abby reading comic books or perusing the selection at her local record store.
Posts By This Author
‘Murder on the Orient Express’ Shows How Revenge Doesn’t Mean Justice
Image via the Murder on the Orient Express movie trailer
Kenneth Branagh’s new big-screen adaptation of Christie’s novel is a diverting, gorgeous-looking film that struggles a little at showing the humbling effect that dilemma has on the great detective. However, it does a good job of portraying the pain at the center of this story, and how it metastasizes in its characters.
'Thor: Ragnarok' Is an Intergalactic Superhero Party and Everyone's Invited
Image via Thor/Facebook.
Much like Thor, many white Americans are only now reconciling with the idea that the narrative we’ve grown up believing cuts out huge chunks of the country’s history. It’s especially pertinent that this perspective comes to us from an Indigenous filmmaker (Waititi is Maori, from New Zealand), whose country has its own long history of racism, and who championed cultural representation on his set.
Clooney’s ‘Suburbicon’ a Needed, but Weak Response to MAGA
Image via Suburbicon trailer
George Clooney’s new film Suburbicon is very obviously a response to the MAGA line of thinking. The film uses two parallel stories to explore both the hidden nastiness of the archetypal white, suburban family, and the day-to-day racism faced by an African American family trying to achieve their own American dream. It’s a setup ripe with allegorical potential, but while Suburbicon is built on good bones, it’s an unfocused mess that wastes its opportunity.
‘Blade Runner 2049’ Paints an All-White Future. Again.
Image via Blade Runner 2049 trailer
Nearly all of the characters K encounters (human and replicant alike) are white. This is in stark contrast to the globalized aesthetic of the city, carried over from the original movie. It could be argued that in a world where a white man like Leto’s Niander Wallace is the one person creating a sizable chunk of the population, it’s not surprising that the creations themselves lack diversity. However, the reality for the film’s casting decisions is likely less about artistic interpretation, and more just plain laziness.
The Troubling View of Communion in ‘mother!’
Image via "mother!" trailer.
mother!'s grotesquely literal take on the Eucharist also fundamentally misses what communion means.
From Ferguson, an Intimate Look at a Movement
Image via Whose Streets / Facebook.
As filmmaking, Whose Streets is dramatic and powerful. As a historical document, it holds even more weight.
‘Step’ Is Inspirational But Could Be More
Image via Step Facebook page
It’s a powerful setup, and the girls’ (and their team’s) journeys are inspiring. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that Lipitz is more concerned with crafting a tidy, three-act narrative than with taking an honest look at who these girls are, and the issues they face.
Why ‘The Big Sick’ Is the Romantic Comedy You Need Right Now
Image via The Big Sick trailer
But really, the best performance in the film belongs to Nanjiani —no surprise, since it’s partly his own story. The affection he feels for his parents makes him afraid to upset them, but to really come into his own as a person, and as a comedian, he has to be honest with them about what he wants for his life.
Northern Ireland, War, and the Power of Unlikely Political Friendships
Nick Hamm, director of ' The Journey'
Olcese: In the creation of the film, did you find yourself sympathizing with one character or the other? Was one character easier to make more sympathetic?
Hamm: No. I couldn’t. I absolutely wanted to make the film balanced and fair to both sides. That was completely essential. Don’t forget, both these figures were not liked in Europe before they became statesmen. They were both radical. McGuinness was an ex-member of the IRA, Paisley was a firebrand preacher on the right. These were two men who were pretty much despised universally outside of their own base. It’s like The Odd Couple in the back of a car. I think what the humanity of that is when you take all that away, when you remove from the politician the artifice, and you get a chance to look at them as people, and I think that’s what happens in the movie.
‘The Journey’ Reminds Us That Peace Can Be Possible In Politics
Image via The Journey trailer
Unfortunately, the script, by writer Colin Bateman often tends toward the bland, with the exception of a couple of pivotal scenes. Both Paisley and McGuinness were big, powerful personalities, with many facets to explore. The script, however, takes what could be a truly interesting exploration of two dynamic characters, and often reduces them to a pair of old men arguing in the back of a car. There are some standout moments where beliefs are challenged and moments of real emotional honesty are reached, but it takes some waiting to get there.
‘Baby Driver’ Is Another Film About Spectacle, Not Substance
Image via Baby Driver Facebook page
The new film Baby Driver is a movie that expresses joy through art, specifically music. The action film from director Edgar Wright connects the joy of listening to a favorite song to the way those musical rhythms color our everyday lives. At its best, the film is a celebration of joy in creativity that bleeds over into a joy in creation itself. It struggles, however, to turn that aesthetic delight into something of substance.
Religious Movies Usually Feel Fake. ‘The Wedding Plan’ Is Different
Image via The Wedding Plan website
Film critic Alissa Wilkinson writes that “Christian theology is rich and ... full of imagination that's broad enough to take up residence among all kinds of human cultures. It contains within itself the idea that art exists as a good unto itself, not just a utilitarian vehicle for messages.” The Wedding Plan is a prime example of this kind of religious art. It’s a message movie, a window into a culture that makes the specific and personal universally relatable, and still manages to tell a good story.
How ‘Wonder Woman’ Does Not Placate Audiences
Image via Wonder Woman Facebook Group
At first glance, the meaning behind this tagline for Wonder Woman feels obvious, it is the next step on the DC franchise road to November’s Justice League movie. But of course, there’s more to it than that. Wonder Woman marks a feminist milestone, too, one that feels like artistic justice: it’s the first major superhero movie to feature a female hero, and the first to use a female director, Patty Jenkins.
‘War Machine’ Shows We Cannot Satirize Combat
Image via War Machine Facebook Page
The biggest issue War Machine faces is that satire seems to be the wrong track for the movie to take. War and soldiers are difficult subjects to make funny. The best that writer-director Michôd can manage is to provide the stars — like Pitt and his military cohort — with a couple of strange quirks to color their performances. Sometimes these characterizations feel lazy, other times like the actors are trying too hard. The humor, when it’s there, feels forced.
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.’ Has Some Growing Up to Do
Image via Disney
In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, out this weekend, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket, (Bradley Cooper) and Groot, (Vin Diesel) are still learning lessons in openness and humility. But oddly, the film they’re in needs help maintaining emotional honesty, too. Where the first movie kept a fine balance of pathos and jokes, the second Guardians film is almost caustically cynical. The film is so preoccupied with witty banter that it misses nearly every opportunity to plumb the depths of the themes it presents, until finally pulling it together at the very end.
‘The Lost City of Z’ and the Elusiveness of Perfection
Screenshot from "The Lost City of Z"/Facebook
As Christians in an unjust world, it’s easy for us to long for escape, for a “pure, uncorrupted” place that makes sense to us — that is, our ideas of heaven. But while it’s important to desire that perfection, we ourselves can’t actually attain it, as true comprehension of heaven lies beyond earthly grasp. If getting to heaven is the only thing we care about, we’re missing the point.
‘Colossal:’ A Monster Movie About Our Own Personal Demons
Image via "Colossal"/Facebook
Colossal isn’t just a movie about a woman overcoming her bad habits. It’s about a woman discovering her own power and agency, and the refusal of the men in her life to accept that agency.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Remains Enchanted — and Problematic
Image via Beauty and the Beast trailer
The updated, live-action version of the film, out this weekend, manages to make the development of its central romance a little more redemptive. It’s mainly a recreation of the original film, but manages to squeeze in some additional context that make its characters more fully-rounded, and their circumstances more understandable. But while this progressive package [complete with a more diverse cast and LGBTQ-friendly supporting characters] is a bit easier to swallow, the core problem of the story still remains.
Can Love Triumph Over Racism?
Image via "A United Kingdom"/Facebook
Like Hidden Figures before it, the post-World War II historical drama A United Kingdom is a great and worthy story, told poorly. The real-life account of the marriage between Londoner Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) and Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), the ruler of Beuchanaland (now Botswana), is an incredible story about an interracial relationship with world-changing political implications. Unfortunately, the film does its subjects little credit, suffering from directing and writing choices that keep it from achieving its potential.
'I Am Not Your Negro' Is Required Viewing
Though the words were written decades ago, it’s both astounding and shameful that Baldwin’s writings explain the past yet sound like they could have been published last week. Peck tackles Baldwin’s writing by topic, from American identity to stereotypes and representation in popular culture, alienation from a church Baldwin claims is refusing to practice selfless love, and white denial of the brutality faced by civil rights protesters.