# Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson is an American film critic. She is the co-host of the podcast Unspooled. She has reviewed films for several publications, including LA Weekly, The New York Times, Variety, and The Washington Post.

## Early life and education

Nicholson was raised in San Antonio, Texas. As a child, she developed her admiration for films after watching "ancient films on TV" with her father. While studying at Incarnate Word High School, Nicholson remembered repeatedly watching Home Alone (1990) with her friends, as well as watching films starring Leonardo DiCaprio. When she began attending the University of Oklahoma (OC), Nicholson initially enrolled to study psychology. During her second semester, Nicholson took an anthropology course; she reflected: "I felt I was always really interested in the way people think about culture."
After attending a film class, Nicholson became fascinated that narrative film can visually represent a culture of a certain time. Nicholson then double majored with a B.A. in Film Studies and Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma, and graduated in 2002. During her studies at OC, Nicholson interned at LA Weekly, and wrote freelance theater reviews for the paper for the subsequent nine years. Nicholson then relocated to Los Angeles where she enrolled into the University of Southern California (USC), and graduated with a Masters in Professional Writing in 2008.

## Career
### Film critic

After graduating, Nicholson served as the editor-in-chief of Boxoffice Magazine. In that capacity, she launched Boxoffice Weekly, an iPad-exclusive e-magazine. Meanwhile, she also freelanced for the Los Angeles Times, Movieline, Movies.com, Fandango and IndieWire, and was the film editor at Inland Empire Weekly from 2006 to 2010.
In July 2013, Nicholson was hired as a full-time film critic for LA Weekly, a position she considered her dream job. Her reviews were featured in both the print and online editions, as well as eleven publications owned by Voice Media Group. When reflecting on her role as a film critic, she stated, "When people ask me how I judge a film, I tend to say I judge a film based on what it wanted to do." In 2014, Nicholson wrote an essay "Why Renée Zellweger's Face Matters," which was published in LA Weekly. Based on the essay, she was the recipient of the Best Online Commentary Award at the 2015 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards. She also won the Best Critic Award in Broadcast or Print for her submitted reviews of American Sniper (2014) and Fifty Shades of Grey and Focus (both released in 2015).
In January 2016, Nicholson left LA Weekly and became the chief film critic for MTV News. Afterwards, she reviewed films and wrote articles that were published in Variety, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. In November 2024, Nicholson was hired as the film critic for the Los Angeles Times.
Nicholson is a member of the international jury of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival taking place in February 2025.

### Author

In 2014, Nicholson published her first book, Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor. When asked why she selected to write about Tom Cruise, she replied: "He's an actor who so famous, but I feel like he's hiding in plain sight. Everybody knows who he is but no one really takes him as a serious actor. I really like taking someone that everybody thinks they know and making the argument that he's even more than we think." She was given two and a half months to write the book, in which she watched ten of Cruise's films and analyzed them to determine his growth as an actor. Her second book Extra Girls is scheduled to be released by Simon & Schuster.

### Podcast host

In 2014, Nicholson began hosting the podcast series The Canon on Earwolf, alongside Devin Faraci. In October 2016, due to a sexual assault allegation made against Faraci, Nicholson and Earwolf mutually agreed to place the podcast on an indefinite hiatus. In April 2017, the series returned from its hiatus but without Faraci. Nicholson explained Faraci "won't be coming back for this version" but that "when and if he is ready to come back, the door is open." That same month, she invited actor Paul Scheer to discuss the 1984 film Ghostbusters. Scheer defended the film's artistic merits, in which Nicholson thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that she invited Scheer back to discuss The Room (2003) later that year. In 2018, she and Scheer launched their joint podcast Unspooled. The podcast debuted at number 1 on iTunes Film & TV podcast rankings and number 4 on the iTunes overall top chart.

## Publications

* Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor. Phaidon Press. 2014. ISBN 978-0-714-86801-1.
* "Why Renée Zellweger's Face Matters". LA Weekly. October 21, 2014. Archived from the original on June 14, 2021.
* Nicholson, Amy (2018). "Amy Nicholson on The Decline of Western Civilization I & II (1981 & 1988)". In Malone, Alicia (ed.). The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made By Women. Coral Gables, Florida: Mango Publishing. pp. 88–89. ISBN 978-1-63353-837-5.