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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,...

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,...

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,...