In The Smell of Apples, South African director John Trengrove examines the dawning consciousness of an Afrikaner boy as he begins to realize the horrors of the apartheid system. An adaptation of the 1993 book by Mark Behr, the movie […]

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Hirokazu Kore-eda has spent his career making quiet, humane films about families, and he won the Palme d’Or for one of them, Shoplifters, in 2018. Sheep in the Box, his seventeenth feature, keeps its attention on parents and children but […]

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South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) just premiered his latest movie, The Ugly (based on his graphic novel), at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where I reviewed it. Set in two different time periods, the film features actor Park Jeong-min in […]

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(Here at Hammer to Nail, we are all about true independent cinema. But we also have to tip our hat to the great films of yesteryear that continue to inspire filmmakers and cinephiles alike. This week, Brad Cook hustles into […]

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