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Coronation: Public asked to swear allegiance to King Charles

People watching the Coronation will be invited to join a “chorus of millions” to swear allegiance to the King and his heirs, organisers say. The public pledge is one of

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Why US presidents skip royal coronations

The United States and the United Kingdom have long enjoyed what Winston Churchill dubbed a “special relationship” – yet no US president has ever attended a royal coronation. Does this

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Thailand’s crawling queen and other coronation rites

The world will be watching as King Charles III is crowned in a ceremony steeped in ancient tradition on 6 May. But in other monarchies around the globe there are

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Japan: Kishida smoke bomb sparks memories of slain PM Abe

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is safe. After the smoke bomb attack that happened as he was about to give a speech on the local elections campaign trail, he simply

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Jerusalem Christians say attacks on the rise

At the end of January, an extremist Jewish mob hurled chairs and damaged property in violent scenes at an Armenian-owned restaurant by New Gate in the Old City. There were

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Joe Biden celebrates family ties in pub on Ireland tour

US President Joe Biden has paid homage to his Irish heritage as thousands of people gathered to greet him on a tour of the home county of his ancestors. In

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Turkish elections: Erdogan kicks off race to hold on to power

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched his ruling party’s bid to stay in power, as he seeks to extend his leadership of Turkey beyond 20 years. He is facing his

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Ukraine war: Who leaked top secret US documents – and why?

What to make of the dozens of classified American Defence Department documents – maps, charts and photographs – now circulating on the internet? Complete with timelines and dozens of impenetrable

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From Ghana to Germany: Tracking down the owner of a lost wallet

The black, weathered, plastic wallet found on the Italian island of Lampedusa had been carried 3,500km (2,200 miles) from Ghana and then seemingly discarded. Opening it up, Richard Opoku’s face

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Iraq’s Saddam still revered in Jordan 20 years later

Twenty years after the fall of his regime, the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein remains admired and popular in Jordan where his image can still be seen across the country.

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The megastar plays a philosophy professor shaken by a student’s sexual assault allegation against a colleague in Luca Guadagnino’s new film – and she’s easily the best thing about it. Julia Roberts doesn’t make many films these days. She was in Leave the World Behind in 2023; in 2022, there was her tropical romantic comedy with George Clooney, Ticket to Paradise; and then we have to jump all the way back to 2018 for her previous turn in Ben Is Back. But you can see why she chose to star in After the Hunt, a contentious campus drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers). Roberts is on screen for almost every one of its 139 minutes, and she is the monumental centre around which its chaos and controversy swirl. It’s the kind of heavyweight role that gets awards nominations if it goes to the right person – and Roberts is definitely the right person. Her character is Alma, a philosophy professor at Yale University. Striding regally around its leafy quadrangles in a chic white suit that matches her blonde hair, this combatively intelligent alpha female is adored by everyone who knows her. Her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is resigned to the fact that he loves her more than she loves him, and is willing to make whimsical jokes about the imbalance; Hank (Andrew Garfield), a would-be rebellious friend and colleague, is even more flirtatious with her than he is with everyone else; and her favourite PhD student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), worships her – which could explain why she is Alma’s favourite PhD student. It seems as if the status quo might soon be upset, though, as either Alma or Hank – or perhaps both – is expected to be granted permanent tenure. But then something far more drastic happens. The day after a boozy party in Alma and Frederik’s book-lined flat, Maggie tells Alma that Hank walked her home and then “crossed a line”. Alma is sympathetic – but only up to a point. There is no evidence of assault, so she isn’t sure whether to trust the word of a new friend over an old one, especially at such a critical moment in her career. And maybe, her thinking goes, lines were crossed at the party anyway, considering that teachers and students were hugging each other while knocking back expensive wine. “Roberts’ Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful” It’s refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be. Guadagnino keeps showing off his quirky camera angles and intrusive music choices. The screenplay, by Nora Garrett, squeezes too much philosophical jargon into the dialogue, and too many tangential scenes and subplots into the structure. You might think that the alleged assault would be a big enough deal for any film, but Alma is given mysterious abdominal pains and guilty secrets, and Maggie is overloaded with significance as a queer, black, plagiarism-prone young woman with a non-binary partner and rich parents who are major donors to the university. In theory, viewers of After the Hunt should leave the cinema arguing about its subject matter. In practice, they’re more likely to be asking each other what was going on and what it meant. It’s all a bit much, basically. Garfield, miscast as a denim-clad dude who is, it is implied, roughly the same age as Roberts’ character, shouts and swears and waves his arms with a quantity-over-quality approach to acting. Stuhlbarg’s flouncing and sing-song delivery are presumably meant to be irritating, but perhaps not as irritating as they actually are. At the heart of it all, though, Roberts is a different matter. She understands that less can be more. Her Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful and her pain all the more intense. Her muttering is scarier than Garfield’s yelling, and when she glares at someone, they stay glared at. It’s an expertly controlled performance which demonstrates why Roberts has been a Hollywood icon for so long, and why she could well be in line for her second Oscar, 25 years after Erin Brockovich. After the Hunt would have been better if everyone else involved had had some of that control, too.

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