Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 10:21 am
Feature

UN experts cast blame on Rwanda and Uganda. What are they doing in DRC?

Rwanda is in “command and control” of M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda has “unilaterally doubled its military presence” in the DRC, and armed groups

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Why are some male viewers intimidated by Women-centric Films?

In the last decade, Bollywood has seen an important shift in its storytelling — one where women no longer just play the love interest or the sacrificial mother. Films like

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72 Hours of fury, fear, and resistance at DU campus

It was the stroke of midnight on July 14 when the heart of Dhaka University metamorphosed into an implicit battlefield. What started as a protest demanding reforms in government job

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Indian tennis player Radhika Yadav shot dead by father

Radhika Yadav, a 25-year-old state-level tennis player, was reportedly shot dead by her father in Haryana’s Gurugram on Thursday, police said, adding that an ‘Instagram reel’ could have been the

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Escaped lion attacks woman, children in Pakistan street

An escaped pet lion chased a woman and two children down a busy street in Pakistan’s Lahore, police said Friday (4 July), with dramatic footage showing the big cat leaping

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Escaped lion attacks woman, children in Pakistan street

An escaped pet lion chased a woman and two children down a busy street in Pakistan’s Lahore, police said Friday (4 July), with dramatic footage showing the big cat leaping

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Why is there no life on Mars? Rover finds a clue

Why is Mars barren and uninhabitable, while life has always thrived here on our relatively similar planet Earth? A discovery made by a NASA rover has offered a clue for

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Women on screen, misread by the gaze: A Dhallywood dilemma

In recent years, Bangladeshi cinema has undergone a powerful revival. From box office blockbusters to viral OTT hits, films like Tandob, Poran, Toofan, Surongo, and Daagi are captivating diverse audiences

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Kadam: The emblematic blossom of the monsoon

With the arrival of Ashar, the first month of the monsoon in the Bengali calendar, the season ushers in steady rainfall, rivers brimming with water, abundant fish, and, of course,

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Telegram boss to leave fortune to over 100 children he has fathered

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of instant messaging app Telegram, plans to leave his fortune to the more than 100 children he has fathered, reports CNN. The Russian-born tech

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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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