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Amy Nicholson

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Amy Nicholson is the film critic of the Los Angeles Times and the host of the podcast "Unspooled." She is a current on-air voice at LAist and KCRW, and a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. Formerly, she was the chief film critic for MTV News and LA Weekly. Her other credits include the New York Times, the Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone and the Guardian, plus the podcast miniseries "Zoom," "The Canon," "Quentin Tarantino Presents," "Halloween Unmasked," and "Skillset." She has served on the juries for Sundance and SXSW, as well as the FIPRESCI juries for the Moscow International Film Festival, Cairo International Film Festival and Eurasia International Film Festival, among others. Amy holds a double B.A. in Film Studies and Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma as well as a Masters in Professional Writing from USC.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 93% EDIT “Gruesomely both low and highbrow, it’s the movie equivalent of Jell-O wrestling an anthropology professor at Burning Man, which may have been the inspiration of one of its standout characters, Ralph Fiennes’ spry and mesmerizing Dr. Ian Kelson” – Los Angeles Times Jan 15, 2026 Full Review Primate (2025) 79% EDIT “One chimpanzee with a typewriter could pound out the script for "Primate" in an hour. ” – Los Angeles Times Jan 9, 2026 Full Review Dead Man's Wire (2025) 91% EDIT “Skarsgård plays the role somewhere between a soapbox preacher and a "Scooby-Doo" episode that imagines Shaggy unmasking a money-grubbing bad guy and threatening to beat him to death. ” – Los Angeles Times Jan 8, 2026 Full Review Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) 81% EDIT “If you're tracking the happiness of generations, it feels like Jarmusch definitely feels like everybody's happiness has gone a lot downhill since their parents who are doing glamorous, interesting things.” – FilmWeek (LAist) Dec 31, 2025 Full Review The Plague (2025) 97% EDIT “A story that takes you back to being in middle school in the most horrendous way... Very well done on behalf of the director.” – FilmWeek (LAist) Dec 30, 2025 Full Review The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) 87% EDIT “I loved seeing the fleshliness of religion in this movie... I think where I kept tripping over the film was that the character of Ann Lee herself is such a zealot that once she decides who she is and what she wants, she just goes for it.” – FilmWeek (LAist) Dec 30, 2025 Full Review No Other Choice (2025) 97% EDIT “I couldn't get a grasp on the tone that it wants to have. There's scenes that are mixing tension, pathos, and slapstick all at once, and I felt like it kind of watered them all down instead of making me feel like I was gripped by it. ” – FilmWeek (LAist) Dec 30, 2025 Full Review Song Sung Blue (2025) 78% EDIT “You won’t see a movie with better music and worse dialogue this holiday season than the bizarrely charming "Song Sung Blue"” – Los Angeles Times Dec 24, 2025 Full Review Marty Supreme (2025) 94% EDIT “When you weigh his selfish desires against any other character’s needs, Marty is as hollow as a ping pong ball. It really is all about his balls. Their embossing reads: "Marty Supreme — Made in America."” – Los Angeles Times Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) 66% EDIT “What really feels like Cameron’s daredevil creative risk is his insistence on treating the impossible like it’s mundane, like the sight of all 9-foot-5 inches of Quaritch casually chilling out in a hoodie” – Los Angeles Times Dec 16, 2025 Full Review Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2006) 100% EDIT “The exhausting, invigorating totality of the thing sets its own tone.” – Los Angeles Times Dec 5, 2025 Full Review Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) 92% EDIT “It does seem like this impassioned crowd-pleaser is asking how many Christians would recognize Jesus if he walked among us today — and if today’s church would still thank their savior for purging it of scoundrels.” – Los Angeles Times Nov 25, 2025 Full Review Hamnet (2025) 86% EDIT “William Shakespeare wouldn’t be wowed by this domestic drama about his home life back in Stratford-upon-Avon. Where’s the action? The wit? The wordplay?” – Los Angeles Times Nov 25, 2025 Full Review Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025) 95% EDIT “The action spectacular of the year stars a 66-year-old man in a speeding truck. "Sisu: Road to Revenge" declares its intention in the title — it’s a scrappy, indie translation of "Mad Max: Fury Road."” – Los Angeles Times Nov 20, 2025 Full Review Wicked: For Good (2025) 66% EDIT “The first installment was all tedious set-up. The second has a body count.” – Los Angeles Times Nov 18, 2025 Full Review The Running Man (2025) 62% EDIT “Instead of a funhouse mirror of what could be, it’s merely a smudged reflection of what is.” – Los Angeles Times Nov 13, 2025 Full Review Sirāt (2025) 92% EDIT “The second time I saw the road thriller "Sirāt," I couldn’t wait to hear the audience moan” – Los Angeles Times Nov 12, 2025 Full Review Sentimental Value (2025) 97% EDIT “There’s a crack running through “Sentimental Value” too. A third of it wants to be a feisty industry satire, but the rest believes there’s prestige value in tugging on the heartstrings. The title seems to be as much about that as anything.” – Los Angeles Times Nov 6, 2025 Full Review Die My Love (2025) 74% EDIT “As good and committed as Jennifer Lawrence is, there were times I wanted to rescue her from her own movie, to protect her from the fate of Faye Dunaway when “Mommie Dearest” turned another blond Oscar winner into a joke.” – L.A. Weekly Nov 5, 2025 Full Review Nouvelle Vague (2025) 91% EDIT “It’s the origin story of Godard, and, in a way, of himself. Even more importantly, it’s a manual for what Linklater hopes will be a fresh wave of talent storming the shore any minute. (I’m counting on it.)” – Los Angeles Times Oct 29, 2025 Full Review Bugonia (2025) 88% EDIT ““Bugonia” is a hilarious movie with no hope for the future of humanity. What optimism there is lies only in the title, an ancient Greek word for the science of transforming dead cows into hives, of turning death into life.” – Los Angeles Times Oct 23, 2025 Full Review Hedda (2025) 89% EDIT “Their rollicking redo, set from dusk to hangover at a drunken bacchanal, is vibrant and viciously alive. With apologies to Ibsen’s ghost, DaCosta’s tweaks have sharpened its rage.” – Los Angeles Times Oct 22, 2025 Full Review Frankenstein (2025) 85% EDIT “Of course, Elordi’s Creature looks good. He’s been assembled from the choicest bits of man flesh to show off the talent of his creator, not so different from Steve Jobs caressing samples of brushed aluminum. ” – Los Angeles Times Oct 16, 2025 Full Review Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) 77% EDIT “A sexual and scatological dazzler about an inmate‘s obsession with a favorite musical, it sounds like a thing some folks won’t watch even if they, too, were locked in a prison for years. Their loss. In the spirit of the film, I’ll try to change their mind” – Los Angeles Times Oct 9, 2025 Full Review After the Hunt (2025) 37% EDIT “Guadagnino’s driving interest is attacking academia as a rat’s nest of egomaniacs and cowards and insular, faux-radical thinking. The cold lighting has visible contempt for everyone onscreen” – Los Angeles Times Oct 9, 2025 Full Review
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