Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2022, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.
2022 was the year I had to recalibrate my relationship with cinema and television. Like Brendan Gleeson’s exasperated Colm in The Banshees of Inisherin, a man nearing the end of his life and done wasting his energy on natterers, post-pandemic life has me questioning how much time I have left on this earth to devote to art that simply doesn’t appeal to me. As a maximalist consumer by nature, I’ve spent my first 34 years watching anything and everything to stay sharp on what’s buzzing in the zeitgeist. I’m getting tired. And maybe, just maybe, the omnicrises of the early 2020s are pushing me toward shows and movies that uplift me in some way. That’s probably why I gravitated toward family films, romantic comedies,...
2022 was the year I had to recalibrate my relationship with cinema and television. Like Brendan Gleeson’s exasperated Colm in The Banshees of Inisherin, a man nearing the end of his life and done wasting his energy on natterers, post-pandemic life has me questioning how much time I have left on this earth to devote to art that simply doesn’t appeal to me. As a maximalist consumer by nature, I’ve spent my first 34 years watching anything and everything to stay sharp on what’s buzzing in the zeitgeist. I’m getting tired. And maybe, just maybe, the omnicrises of the early 2020s are pushing me toward shows and movies that uplift me in some way. That’s probably why I gravitated toward family films, romantic comedies,...
- 1/3/2023
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Click here to read the full article.
Some of this year’s best supporting performances in film didn’t arise from your classic scenery-chewing powerhouse monologues or even a de rigueur prolonged cameo by a stalwart veteran — the kinds of smaller dramatic roles that net major industry awards. For every heartrending speech in Women Talking, The Whale and The Fabelmans, there are still dozens of biting one-liners and sidesplitting visual gags in a handful of 2022’s strongest comedies that should not go ignored. Comedies are often honored for their screenplays, but it takes distinctive talent to bring those vibrant pages to life.
At the top of my personal ballot are the performances I was not expecting when I settled in to watch their films. Thanks to the marketing materials for movies like Triangle of Sadness, Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Menu, for example, I anticipated that I would...
Some of this year’s best supporting performances in film didn’t arise from your classic scenery-chewing powerhouse monologues or even a de rigueur prolonged cameo by a stalwart veteran — the kinds of smaller dramatic roles that net major industry awards. For every heartrending speech in Women Talking, The Whale and The Fabelmans, there are still dozens of biting one-liners and sidesplitting visual gags in a handful of 2022’s strongest comedies that should not go ignored. Comedies are often honored for their screenplays, but it takes distinctive talent to bring those vibrant pages to life.
At the top of my personal ballot are the performances I was not expecting when I settled in to watch their films. Thanks to the marketing materials for movies like Triangle of Sadness, Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Menu, for example, I anticipated that I would...
- 12/29/2022
- by Robyn Bahr
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Our year-end coverage continues with a look at the best performances of 2022. Rather than divide categories into supporting or lead or by gender, we’ve written about our 35 favorites, period. Find our countdown below and start watching the ones you’ve missed here.
35. The Ensemble of Funny Pages
Owen Kline’s Funny Pages may be the sweatiest, stinkiest, most stress-inducing film you’ll ever watch, and you’ll be happy about it. Daniel Zolghadri (believably manipulative) plays a pushy, privileged teen who dreams of being a cartoonist, but the weirdo script buzzes largely thanks to an offbeat supporting cast. Standouts include Stephen Adly Guirgis as a larger-than-life art teacher, Miles Emanuel as a geeky deadpan Bff, Marcia Debonis as a cheeky public defender, and Michael Townsend Wright and Cleveland Thomas Jr. as the illegal basement apartment roommates from hell. But Matthew Maher, playing an unstable former comic book colorist our protagonist tries coercing into mentorship,...
35. The Ensemble of Funny Pages
Owen Kline’s Funny Pages may be the sweatiest, stinkiest, most stress-inducing film you’ll ever watch, and you’ll be happy about it. Daniel Zolghadri (believably manipulative) plays a pushy, privileged teen who dreams of being a cartoonist, but the weirdo script buzzes largely thanks to an offbeat supporting cast. Standouts include Stephen Adly Guirgis as a larger-than-life art teacher, Miles Emanuel as a geeky deadpan Bff, Marcia Debonis as a cheeky public defender, and Michael Townsend Wright and Cleveland Thomas Jr. as the illegal basement apartment roommates from hell. But Matthew Maher, playing an unstable former comic book colorist our protagonist tries coercing into mentorship,...
- 12/19/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Stars: Daniel Zolghadri, Miles Emanuel, Maria Dizzia, Michael Townsend Wright, Marcia DeBonis | Written and Directed by Owen Kline
Cartoons have the power to change the world and seriously make an impact on someone’s life, and nobody understands that better than the character of Robert. He is an aspiring professional cartoonist, having gotten into the art form ever since his youth. Turns out, he’s also super good at it and impresses everyone with his work. But he finds out fairly quickly that, in order to make it big, you have to do a lot of hard work and put a ton of effort in. This is essentially what Owen Kline‘s Funny Pages is about. We watch Robert get into increasingly awkward situations, funny ones, emotional, and heartbreaking ones all throughout this 86-minute journey.
Although Funny Pages isn’t a great movie, it’s still an enjoyable enough film...
Cartoons have the power to change the world and seriously make an impact on someone’s life, and nobody understands that better than the character of Robert. He is an aspiring professional cartoonist, having gotten into the art form ever since his youth. Turns out, he’s also super good at it and impresses everyone with his work. But he finds out fairly quickly that, in order to make it big, you have to do a lot of hard work and put a ton of effort in. This is essentially what Owen Kline‘s Funny Pages is about. We watch Robert get into increasingly awkward situations, funny ones, emotional, and heartbreaking ones all throughout this 86-minute journey.
Although Funny Pages isn’t a great movie, it’s still an enjoyable enough film...
- 9/23/2022
- by Caillou Pettis
- Nerdly
Funny Pages Review — Funny Pages (2022) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Owen Kline and starring Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel, Maria Dizzia, Josh Pais, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Marcia DeBonis, Michael Townsend Wright, Ron Rifkin, Andy Milonakis and Constance Shulman. A24 has always been a movie studio which distributes films that [...]
Continue reading: Film Review: Funny Pages (2022): An Inspired but Sometimes Lackluster Story of a Young Cartoonist’s Escapades...
Continue reading: Film Review: Funny Pages (2022): An Inspired but Sometimes Lackluster Story of a Young Cartoonist’s Escapades...
- 9/3/2022
- by Thomas Duffy
- Film-Book
Owen Kline’s Funny Pages is not a cartoon, but its young hero, Roger, nevertheless comes off like a coyote on the run from the anvils threatening to fall on his head. His own ego is dropping the anvils. Roger, played by Daniel Zolghadri, is an 18-year-old wannabe comic artist, a promising young man who’s been given the leeway to dive into his own obsessions at the expense of most anything else, his fat imagination nourished by his job at a comic-book store, his subversive (read: dirty) mini comix...
- 8/30/2022
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
Cohen Media Group hopes a Spanish film can dent the tough market for foreign language fare, Bleecker Street is out with a hostage drama and A24 presents Owen Kline’s directorial debut about a teenage cartoonist as the arthouse market flexes more muscle than it has in weeks.
The dearth of new releases itself nudged some distributors to grab a window now before a more crowded fall, including Uar’s supersized specialty opening of the Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton-starring Three Thousand Years Of Longing on 2,436 screens, considerably wider than originally anticipated.
George Miller’s fantasy fairytale, written by Miller and Augusta Gore, is based on the 1994 A.S. Byatt short story ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’. Swinton is a complacent academic, Elba is the Djinn (a kind of spirit genie) she encounters at a conference in Istanbul in the 2022 Cannes Film Festival out-of-competition entry. Deadline review here.
The Good Boss...
The dearth of new releases itself nudged some distributors to grab a window now before a more crowded fall, including Uar’s supersized specialty opening of the Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton-starring Three Thousand Years Of Longing on 2,436 screens, considerably wider than originally anticipated.
George Miller’s fantasy fairytale, written by Miller and Augusta Gore, is based on the 1994 A.S. Byatt short story ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’. Swinton is a complacent academic, Elba is the Djinn (a kind of spirit genie) she encounters at a conference in Istanbul in the 2022 Cannes Film Festival out-of-competition entry. Deadline review here.
The Good Boss...
- 8/26/2022
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
When Owen Kline was 14 years old, he wrote cartoonist Johnny Ryan a fan letter. “I didn’t know who he was,” Ryan told IndieWire. “I just thought it was amusing that a child was sending me fan mail.” Featuring characters like Loady McGee and stories like “The Whorehouse of Dr. Moreau,” Ryan’s “Angry Youth Comix” were not exactly age-appropriate for Kline. But the introduction proved fruitful. Years later, the now 30-year-old Kline went to Ryan when he was working on his first feature, the A24-distributed “Funny Pages.”
“Funny Pages” centers on a New Jersey teen obsessed, like Kline was and clearly still is, with underground comics. After his art teacher and mentor dies in a shockingly horrific accident, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) decides to quit school with the idea of devoting himself to his craft.
Kline was in need of drawings to represent his protagonist’s body of work,...
“Funny Pages” centers on a New Jersey teen obsessed, like Kline was and clearly still is, with underground comics. After his art teacher and mentor dies in a shockingly horrific accident, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) decides to quit school with the idea of devoting himself to his craft.
Kline was in need of drawings to represent his protagonist’s body of work,...
- 8/26/2022
- by Esther Zuckerman
- Indiewire
Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut “Funny Pages” is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey. Kline showcases a simultaneously provocative and poignant point-of-view and delivers an instant indie classic of lo-fi tri-state area cinema.
Kline’s “Funny Pages” is a delightfully disgusting and daring debut, featuring a breakout performance from “Eighth Grade”’s Daniel Zolghadri, as well as a host of New York’s most unique character actors. It also has notes of the Safdie Brothers’ “Uncut Gems” (the brothers serve as producers and Kline helped out on their shorts), a similar subject matter to “American Splendor” and just a soupçon of the gross-out sensibility of “The Greasy Strangler.”
Our protagonist, the young Robert (Zolghadri) is an aspiring comic artist in the tradition of R. Crumb,...
Kline’s “Funny Pages” is a delightfully disgusting and daring debut, featuring a breakout performance from “Eighth Grade”’s Daniel Zolghadri, as well as a host of New York’s most unique character actors. It also has notes of the Safdie Brothers’ “Uncut Gems” (the brothers serve as producers and Kline helped out on their shorts), a similar subject matter to “American Splendor” and just a soupçon of the gross-out sensibility of “The Greasy Strangler.”
Our protagonist, the young Robert (Zolghadri) is an aspiring comic artist in the tradition of R. Crumb,...
- 8/26/2022
- by Katie Walsh
- The Wrap
"It's meant to be fun, that's why they call them the funnies." A24 has unveiled an official trailer for an indie film titled Funny Pages, a coming-of-age comedy marking the feature directorial debut of young director Owen Kline. This tiny little NYC project has been in development for years, and eventually got the support of A24 and the Safdie Brothers, who are producers. This premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar, and opens in the US in August this summer. The film stars Daniel Zolghadri as Robert, a young cartoonist hoping to make a name for himself in the comics industry and skip college. But he encounters lots of trouble, from parents to overly-critical friends, in this quirky look at a passionate kid who wants to keep the art of hand-drawn cartoons alive. Also stars Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel, Maria Dizzia, and Josh Pais. I'm not...
- 7/20/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
“Funny Pages,” a scruffy, grungy, likably tossed-together sketchbook of a low-budget indie comedy, typifies a paradox that now runs through a great deal of independent cinema. The movie, set in a humdrum New Jersey suburbia, unfolds on the moldy bottom rung of the comic-book ladder. It centers on two friends who are obsessed with drawing their own comics, and it’s about the insular world of geeks and creeps and pervs and weirdos that this brings them into contact with.
Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), at 17, has left the posh home of his parents in Princeton and set up residence in downscale Trenton, where he hangs out at the local comic-book store along with his friend, the sweetly passive, long-haired, acne-ridden Miles (Miles Emanuel), who has a secret crush on him. These two eat, breathe, and sleep comic books. But they’re not into superheroes. To them the comic-book world is all...
Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), at 17, has left the posh home of his parents in Princeton and set up residence in downscale Trenton, where he hangs out at the local comic-book store along with his friend, the sweetly passive, long-haired, acne-ridden Miles (Miles Emanuel), who has a secret crush on him. These two eat, breathe, and sleep comic books. But they’re not into superheroes. To them the comic-book world is all...
- 6/6/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
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