Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free
While Kevin Hart may have caused controversy after dropping out of Oscars host , there’s no sign of impact on his appeal to cinemagoers.
The actor and comedian’s latest film has topped the US box-office , beating superhero blockbuster Aquaman
Starring Hart as a recently paroled convict who becomes the unlikely fired of a wealthy quadriplegic man (Bryan Cranston), The Upside
The film – a remake of French 2011 drama The Intouchables – has had a long journey to cinemas. Having first debuted at the 2017 Toronto Festival, distribution rights were bought by the Weinstein company.
Following numerous allegations of sexual assault against founder Harvey Weinstein, the company was closed and the rights to the film were later bought by STX Entertainment and Lantern Entertainment.
Hart was embroiled in controversy himself just weeks before The Upside ‘s release. The 39-year-old was announced as host of the 2019 Oscars, leading to homophobic tweets from almost a decade ago resurfacing online.
After initially refusing to apologise, Hart later said sorry to the LGBT+ community for the comments and appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show .
The Oscars has since decided to continue without a host , with organisers instead hoping to attract big names to present awards.
Show all 15 1 /15The 15 best films of 2018 The 15 best films of 2018 15. Shoplifters Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters could be the year’s most disarming film. On first glance, the clan at its centre are just like any other, but their impulsive decision to take in a missing girl begins a series of rug-pulls you wouldn’t expect from a film such as this. A complex heartbreaker, albeit one that starts out looking like the more modest family dramas Kore-eda is known for.
GAGA Pictures / Thunderbird Releasing
The 15 best films of 2018 14. Game Night “We knew there was a bad version of this movie that could exist,” said Game Night ’s co-director John Francis Daley (the kid from Freaks and Geeks ). This certainly isn’t it. Starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as a competitive married couple who mistake an actual kidnapping for a particularly immersive role play game, Game Night is snappy, witty and fully committed to its brilliant, tonally unsettling conceit.
Rex
The 15 best films of 2018 13. Isle of Dogs Any Wes Anderson film is likely to be offbeat, fastidiously stylish and shot through with the auteur's understated drollery. Isle of Dogs is no different. A stop-motion story of abandoned canines taking on a corrupt human government, it's set in a futuristic Japan and deals with some pretty heavy themes (fascism, ethnic cleansing). Funny and full of heart.
The 15 best films of 2018 12. They Shall Not Grow Old Peter Jackson’s First World War documentary is a remarkable step-forward for historical filmmaking. The Lord of the Rings director breathes new life into black and white archive footage from the Imperial War Museum, digitally restoring and smoothing the grainy source material before adding colour and sound. The result is a stunning cinematic experience that vividly brings the past into the present. By using the voices of veteran British soldiers interviewed about their experiences in the trenches, Jackson also includes a fascinating narrative that’s both gripping and informative. A wonderfully apt way to mark the centenary of the Great War.
BBC/IWM
The 15 best films of 2018 11. First Reformed Nobody knew if Paul Schrader still had it in him to make a film as angry or as barbed as First Reformed . There is the same raw power here as found in his earlier features about tormented loners. Cinephiles will delight in the (sometimes a little self-conscious) references to Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky, but you can’t help but relish the intensity and intelligence in Ethan Hawke’s performance as the tormented, guilt-ridden priest.
Picturehouse Entertainment
The 15 best films of 2018 10. Black Panther There were two Marvel films released this year, one of which – Avengers Infinity War – was an over-crowded, if ambitious, sequel. The other was a landmark film – not just for Marvel, but for cinema. Black Panther was fit to bursting with selling points, all combining to deliver the studio’s best film: Michael B Jordan’s standout villain, scene-stealing performances from Danai Guria and Letitia Wright, plus the direction of Creed ’s Ryan Coogler who proved an inspired appointment. Wakanda forever, indeed.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
The 15 best films of 2018 9. Cold War Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War , shot in the sleekest black and white, is an effortlessly stylish and romantic drama set in a period of political convulsion. It offers everything from Polish folk music to the sultriest Birth of the Cool-style jazz. Pawlikowski includes moments of reckless hedonism alongside scenes of exile and imprisonment. Best of all, the film has a truly wonderful performance from Joanna Kulig as Zula, the free-spirited young folk singer turned femme fatale.
Kino Świat
The 15 best films of 2018 8. A Star Is Born There are no two ways about it: Bradley Cooper's rock star Jackson Mane inviting Ally – a small-town waitress played by Lady Gaga – onto stage to sing her song in front of thousands of his fans is movie magic. Regardless of your stance on the film's back half and pretty maudlin ending, A Star is Born is an old-fashioned success story with an intensity that brings up the hairs on the back of your neck.
Clay Enos/Warner Bros/AP
The 15 best films of 2018 7. The Rider Director Chloé Zhao took a gamble casting a real-life family in this modern-day western about a cowboy named Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau). It pays off – this an authentic portrait of contemporary rodeo life in South Dakota. From her amateur cast she somehow coaxes performances more memorable than most pros manage in their entire careers. As moving as it is bold, The Rider also offers an all-too-rare female perspective on masculinity.
Sony Pictures Classics
The 15 best films of 2018 6. Leave No Trace Eight years after Winter’s Bone made a star of Jennifer Lawrence, Leave No Trace – director Debra Granik’s first feature film since then – should rightly make a star of Thomasin McKenzie too. Based on the book My Abandonment by Peter Rook, Leave No Trace is virtually a two-hander between McKenzie and Ben Foster. They play a PTSD-suffering war veteran and his daughter, who live in the forests of Oregon, fending for themselves. Even when the two are arrested and placed in government housing, the film refuses to be anything other than understated and is all the more beguiling for it.
AP
The 15 best films of 2018 5. The Shape of Water Loneliness can sometimes feel like your soul has been chained to the bottom of the ocean, at other times it can feel like you’re speaking a language no one else understands. Guillermo del Toro beautifully illustrates both these nuances in his Oscar-winning fantasy romance, in which a mute woman (Sally Hawkins) unexpectedly falls for a strange aquatic creature (Doug Jones), the only one who sees her as she truly wants to be seen. Theirs is a love so mystical, so overwhelming, that it can only be communicated through the language of dreams.
Twentieth Century Fox
The 15 best films of 2018 4. Lady Bird Lady Bird will always be close to our hearts. There are times when it feels less like a film, more like a hand tracing delicately through memories, of what it felt like to grow up, to say goodbye, and to find one's own place in the universe. Greta Gerwig’s story of a teenager, played by Saoirse Ronan, desperate to escape her hometown and seek the intellectual haven of the East Coast colleges (“where the culture is”, she argues) may be specific in its layout, but it is universal in its emotions.
Moviestore/REX
The 15 best films of 2018 3. You Were Never Really Here Whenever Lynne Ramsey attaches her name to a film, you know to expect something special. You Were Never Really Here marks a career-high for the British auteur, who manages to condense the violent story of a former military man searching for a stolen girl into a viciously edited 90-minute thriller. Joaquin Phoenix makes for the perfect enigmatic leading man, while Jonny Greenwood’s mechanical, piercing score adds to the decidedly eerie atmosphere.
Amazon Studio
The 15 best films of 2018 2. Phantom Thread Should Phantom Thread really be Daniel Day-Lewis’s final film, then the actor can retire knowing that Reynolds Woodcock ranks among his greatest roles. Day-Lewis plays the egomaniacal fashion designer with a childish whimsy, but there's also a spectral quality to him that looms in every scene. Lesley Manville’s deliciously funny Cyril and Vicky Krieps’s superbly sharp Alma offer two cunning counters to Reynolds’s growing appetite for self-destruction, making for some wonderfully heated confrontations. Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction allows each character to blossom on screen, in a film that makes for a masterful study of poisonous relationships.
REX
The 15 best films of 2018 1. Roma Loosely based on his own childhood, Alfonso Cuaron's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Gravity is a gorgeous piece of film-making, a quiet paean to the women who raised him. It's a neorealist masterpiece, shot in 65mm black and white, and built from detailed vignettes of domestic life in early 1970s Mexico City, a time there of great social unrest. Savour every scene: the camera takes it all in, as we follow a young Mixtec woman named Cleo (wonderful newcomer Yalitza Aparicio) who looks after a well-to-do family she comes to think of as her own. It's about love, grief and resilience: it will slay you.
Netflix
Meanwhile, Aquaman has topped $1 billion at the global box office, beating DC rival The Dark Knight .
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies