Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 09:12 am
World News

ICC issues arrest warrants for top Russian commanders

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for top Russian commanders over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Sergei Kobylash and Viktor Sokolov, an army lieutenant general and a

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Israel says to allow devotees’ access to Al-Aqsa in Ramadan as in ‘previous years’

Israel will allow as many Muslim devotees to access Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem during the first week of Ramadan as in previous years, the prime minister’s office said on Tuesday.

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Children starving to death in Gaza hospitals: WHO

An aid mission to two hospitals in northern Gaza found horrifying scenes of children dying of starvation, amid dire shortages of food, fuel and medicines, the World Health Organization said Monday.  

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US slaps sanctions on Zimbabwean president and other top leaders

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa and other senior leaders, denouncing what it said was a campaign of rights abuses and corruption. The sanctions,

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Iran executed 834 people in 2023, highest since 2015: rights groups

Iran executed a ‘staggering’ total of at least 834 people in the past year, the highest number since 2015 as capital punishment surged in the Islamic republic, two rights groups

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Haiti declares state of emergency after huge prison break

Haiti’s government declared on Sunday a state of emergency and nighttime curfew in a bid to regain control of the country after a deadly gang assault on the capital’s main

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Human ingenuity can help to save nature, Guterres says on World Wildlife Day

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for action now to protect nature in his message to mark World Wildlife Day. “Human activities have devastated our wildlife. Human ingenuity can help to

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India’s train drivers in crash that killed 14 were watching cricket

The drivers of a train that missed a signal and ploughed into another train, killing 14 people, were distracted because they were watching cricket on a phone, India’s railways minister

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Hamas, Qatari, US envoys in Cairo for Gaza talks

Delegations from Hamas, Qatar and the United States have arrived in Egypt for “a new round of negotiations” toward a truce in the Gaza war, state-linked Al-Qahera News reported Sunday.

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Shehbaz Sharif voted in as Pakistan’s PM for second time

Shehbaz Sharif was voted in as Pakistan’s prime minister for a second time on Sunday, presiding over a shaky alliance that has shut out followers of jailed opposition leader Imran

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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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