Amy Nicholson

Um, anyways, hello.

Hi, I'm Amy Nicholson.

I'm film critic for The Los Angeles Times.

I have written a couple pieces in the past for Rolling Stone, but I am very deeply honored to share the mic today with somebody who's written millions, I'm just gonna say millions, print the legend-

Great newsletter, What's Alan Watching?, a great podcast, TV Is Good.

Hi, Alan Sepinwall.

Amy, thanks for having me.

Well, welcome.

But I guess my hope is that if they take a bunch of people who have been making things elsewhere and give them a couple million dollars to make small movies, that's kind of what we've been hoping Hollywood would do for a long time instead of trying to make everything like 100 200 million dollar budget in the hopes that it makes a billion now the problem is will they take a bunch of youtubers and give them 100 million dollars to say make a 500 million dollar movie like obsession then we're gonna be in trouble but if they give them like you know one to five million and we get a bunch of those movies and you know five percent of them are really good that that seems like a good return on investment from an audience perspective

The critic Amy Nicholson on unspooled Amy Nicholson, I thought had this great point.

That's like to PT's point, you give them a moderate budget and you go for it.

They have been working over their career as YouTubers to manage very specifically what people like and don't like.

Often it's a preview of those that'll be in the top Oscar contention.

Joining us from Toronto to talk about what they've seen and some of their favorites, Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times film critic and host of the podcast Unspooled, and Maureen Lee Linker, LAist film critic and freelance critic and journalist.

Let's start with I Play Rocky.

Amy, what do you think of this film? And just give us a little bit of a thumbnail of it.

He just really tears into the role.

That's great.

We'll continue with our critics Maureen Lee Linker and Amy Nicholson about the Toronto International Film Festival.

It's Film Week on LAist 89.3 and the LAist app.

We have covered the AFI Top 100, and now we are checking off movies from three major lists: the Letterboxd Top 250 Films With the Most Fans, the IMDb Top 250, and The New York Times 1,000 Essential Films, and we're gonna be chasing our own curiosity.

And I'm Amy Nicholson.

I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times.

I'm doing this with a special guest today because Paul is away, and we are talking about one of my favorite movies of all time, a movie that, as of now, is not on any of those major lists except one, my Letterboxd Top 4.

Hello, Julie.

Hi.

Uh, Amy, I'm so delighted to be here.

I was just telling you-

Unspooled.

Yes, this is Unspooled's Summer Roundup, where we put aside movies that deserve to be shot into space and look at the movies that just came out right now and think, "Maybe one day, one day, we can put them aboard a space shuttle and get them out into the universe." Uh, and I gotta say, Amy, this summer, uh, what? The blockbuster is back? I mean, summer is back? I don't know.

[laughs]

This is a big deal, right? I don't think anyone predicted summer movies to hit as hard as they did.

Like, this is what I'm really excited about.

You know, you have so much to kind of pick from, and maybe it's because no one knows what's working that we get to kind of try so many different things.

And I'll tell you the one thing I was so upset about, Amy, I'm like s- I'm still bummed to this day that Jackass: Best & Last did not get the love that I thought-

Ugh

cinematographer Michael Ballhouse, producer A.B. Robertson.

I'm going to make a mistake and refer to her as Amy Nicholson.

Sorry, it's a different person.

Don't call her Joanna

Robinson.

So that's the confusion

is that like two, by the way, two podcasters that we absolutely love, Joanna Robinson and Amy Nicholson.

Yeah.

It just came up.

Amy Nicholson is an incredible podcaster.

She's also on Unspooled with Paul Scheer.

Oh, yeah.

I'm an actor, writer, and director, and I am also someone who paid money on opening weekend to see my Bruce Willis, my star of Moonlighting, in Hudson Hawk, and I was so severely disappointed.

I'm Amy Nicholson.

I'm the film critic for The Los Angeles Times.

I am not surprised at all that Paul paid money to see this opening weekend.

Which I really was fascinated to get into how good the music is, honestly.

It's really hard to write songs that bad.

Amy, I know to prep for this interview, you watched Hudson Hawk.

[laughs] I did watch Hudson Hawk for the first time, and I thought, "Okay."