Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 09:21 am
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Trump vs Biden again? The documents scandal makes it more likely

If you think you’ve seen this movie before, it’s because you have — except the second time will be even more nerve-racking. Yes, world: get ready for Biden vs Trump

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Cheaper, changing and crucial: the rise of solar power

Generating power from sunlight bouncing off the ground, working at night, even helping to grow strawberries: solar panel technology is evolving fast as costs plummet for a key segment of

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Island trip lays bare US-China tussle in the Pacific

They are hundreds of miles from the nearest continent – an archipelago of over 900 islands home to a population smaller than that of the single US city of Seattle

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Poor transport system makes char residents’ life harder

Residents of the remote chars (shoal) of the Brahmaputra River in Jamalpur have to struggle to reach the mainland round the year for lack of enough transport facilities, accelerating their

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Kosovo: Why is trouble flaring up again?

Tensions are running high between ethnic Serbs and the Albanian-led government in Kosovo, south-east Europe. Protesters have blockaded roads and reportedly fired guns after being made to put Kosovan-issued number

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How Singapore is turning multi-storey car parks into farms

Eyleen Goh runs a farm from the top deck of a car park in Singapore. And this is not a small operation – it supplies nearby retailers with up to

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Climate change: Will naming heatwaves save lives?

On 25 June, Esteban Chavez Jr was doing his usual rounds in the city of Pasadena in Los Angeles County when the 24-year-old delivery driver collapsed, felled by sweltering temperatures

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Capitol riots: Prosecutors probe Trump role in election challenge – report

The US Justice Department is examining Donald Trump’s actions in connection with efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, say US media. Federal prosecutors have reportedly asked witnesses

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Myanmar’s executed activists: Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy

Myanmar on Monday woke up to the news that the country’s military junta had executed four democracy activists, including former lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw and veteran protest leader Ko Jimmy.

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Europe wildfires: Are they linked to climate change?

Heatwaves and wildfires across Europe are causing alarm – with warnings some countries could be in for their worst fire seasons so far. So how do wildfires compare with previous

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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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