#Hope the Oscar epilogue was up to you standard even though he didn’t actually tell her anything

[totallovestrucksimp]

Larry x Marian prompt

It’s how his family finds out about their relationship. Larry comes home from the club with a bruised eye and cut up knuckles because someone made remarks about Marian and her romantic history. (Extra love if you include Oscar telling Marian what happened at the club)

”This wasn’t how it was supposed to come out”

“It’s 8:15, Larry should have been back by now. What could possibly be keeping him for so long?”

Dinner at the Russell residence isn’t normally this tense, but when Bertha Russell is worried, so should everyone else be.

“He’s been at the club dear, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s simply too late for him to come.” Assured George.

“And he’s probably drunk.” added Gladys.

“Gladys! Don’t say such things. If he’s not coming, then he should have at lease sent a telegram.”

Just then, there was a commotion at the door.

“And that’s probably it now, one of the footmen can go get it.”

Ignoring her husbands request, Bertha went herself, only for the other two still at the table to come running when they heard her scream.

They were met at the door with the sight of Larry’s face bruised and lip busted, along with a busted knuckle on his right hand. Beside him was Mr Fane, Church, and Bertha, fretting over him.

“George, get him to your office, Gladys, you go and alert the staff, tell them to bring bandages, Mr Fane, thank you for bringing him home.”

“Mother, it’s not that bad, I didn’t break anything.”

“But you could be concussed! I want you looked at properly by a doctor-“

“Mother, I’m FINE-“

“Don’t fight your mother right now, she’s just worried. Come into my office and we’ll have you looked at.” George spoke into Larry’s ear, leading him away.

With Larry, Gladys, George, and Church gone, Mrs Russell was left with Mr Fane.

“What on earth happened to him?” She finally asked, the anxiousness of the situation finally wearing off.

“Well, it’s a bit complicated. We were in the lounge with a few other men simply talking, and one of the other patrons said something that Larry to great offense to. Well, it sort of went out-of-control from there. A small fight broke out before I got him out of there.”

“But what did he say?”

“I…erm, I’d rather not repeat it, but it was quite vulgar, and I dont blame Larry too much for how he reacted.” 

He avoids her gaze, not wanting to be pressed on the subject any longer.

I think I know who this is about now she thinks.

“I will say it was about someone he cares about deeply, but it really should be Larry telling you this. Now I must be going or my wife will worry.”

“Or course, please send Aurora my regards. Thank you again for seeing Larry home safely.”

He nods and heads off.

***

With the four of them plus Church dressing Larry’s wounds in the office, there’s finally time for answers.

“Mr Fane told me about the fight you got into at the club earlier.”

“The other man started it.”

“And you should have ended it! I raised you better than to use your fists to talk instead of your words!”

“He called her a Trollope! I couldn’t let him get away with that!”

“Larry! Your sister is in the room. Please keep your language civil.”

“I’ve heard worse.” Gladys speaks up from beside her father. “And besides, if he was defending a lady’s honor-“

“And he will not have contact with said lady from this moment forth. Not if she’s starting to bring out this behavior in you.”

“You can’t stop me-“

“Larry, as much as I hate to do this in front of your father and sister, I know who you were defending and I know that you’re not well suited. She’s not a good match for you.”

He shoots out of his chair in a fury.

“Marian is MORE than a match for me!”

Absolute silence echos throughout the room.

“…what does any of this have to do with Marian?”

Larry recoils a little in shock, not expecting this reaction from his mother.

“What did Mr Fane tell you?”

“Less than thought. I assumed the fight was about Mrs Blane, but it appears that I was wrong. Start from the beginning, and tell us everything.”

The bruised man lays back in his chair, recounting the events of a few hours earlier.

“Me, Mr Fane, and a couple of others were having some drinks in the lounge, and the conversation got around to the Van Rhijns. One man said that he’s surprised that Mrs Van Rhijn has let Marian stay in the house, even when men keep dropping her left and right. They started speculating why they were dropping her before I stood up for her, but then he asked me why I was defending someone who was likely a trollop, and…well, you know how it went from there. You understand I couldn’t let that go unpunished, right?”

There was a moment of silence after he wrapped up his story, the only sounds being Church applying more tape to his bandaged knuckles.

“Well, that puts the situation in a better light, doesn’t it dear?”

“Yes, I suppose so, but you mustn’t let word about this get too far. If people were to hear about this they might get the wrong idea.”

“And what idea might that be mother?”

“That you two of you are in a courting ship.”

He demeanor suddenly changes. He looks down almost bashful, and the faint trace of a blush rises on his cheeks.

Suddenly, it clicked.

It was about someone he cares about deeply.

Oh.

Oh.

“You and Miss Brook! For how long? When did it start!?” Gladys squeals.

“We started courting right after that night at the opera. We agreed to keep it quiet to not upset her aunt.”

“Why haven’t you told us before now? And what’s your plan for her in the future?” Bertha questioned, still reeling in from the shock.

“I think Larry has had a long night, and so have we. Let’s let him have a rest for we bombarder him with more questions.” Says George, trying to help keep his wife at bay.

“We’ll discuss this in the morning over breakfast. But I want genuine answers from you. I don’t want to mess up her relationship with our family.” She rubs her temples. 

“I’m going up to change.” She leaves the room. Gladys turns to her brother.

“You’ll tell me if you plan to propose to her before you tell mama, right?”

•••Epilogue••• 

At 8:59, Oscar Van Rhijn steps out of his cab on to the corner of 21st street, where he meets the doors of his childhood home. “Mr Van Rhijn! We weren’t expecting you at this hour!” Bannister says as he opens up the house for him.

“Ah, I’m just popping in for a visit. Is Marian around at all?”

“They finished dinner, and she just went upstairs for a lay down. Would you like me to go fetched her?”

“That would be wonderful, thank you.”

He takes a seat as he watches his mother’s butler climb the steps to his cousins room. This gives him time to think about how to tell her about his interesting evening. Never mind the fact that he witnessed Larry Russell get into a fight at the club. Never mind the fact that the fight was about her. Never mind that Larry shouted that he would never be ashamed for fighting out for the woman he loves to the entire place.

“Oscar! What are you doing here? I’d invite your mother in here with us too, but we had a little spat during dinner. Apparently she thinks I’ve been seeing someone behind her back again. What an interesting thought, don’t you think?”

Yes Oscar thought. Things are going to get very interesting indeed.

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2018, Part I

I’ll associate my moviegoing this year with two things: subscription models and superhero films. Realizing that I was the target audience, I signed up for Moviepass in March, then canceled just before they started extorting people in July. (I’ll remember you all semi-fondly, conniving alarmists in the Moviepass Reddit thread.) Thanks to Moviepass, I took full advantage of my free time over the summer, and I found some nice surprises that I wouldn’t have checked out otherwise. From there I joined AMC A-List, which is the rare corporate service that I cannot complain about in any way. Moviepass always felt like some kind of drug deal, whereas A-List is as easy and inviting an experience as possible. I get to seek out Dolby, IMAX, or 3-D showings instead of getting locked out of them, and the electronic ticketing helps with my last-minute availability. (I’ve mastered the art of lovingly putting my daughter to bed, only to desert her and my wife five minutes later. “You know, there’s an 8:10 showing of The Predator, which means 8:30 after previews...”) My overall viewing was up 11% this year, which I have to attribute to these subscriptions. Perhaps I saw too much though. After a self-righteous five-year ban on superhero movies, I caught up in 2019 like the madman completist that I am. On the plus side, I enjoyed Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy, and I vaguely feel more connected with the culture-at-large. But I could have been more selective. The diligence required to watch X-Men: Apocalypse late on a Thursday night took away from, say, my Orson Welles project or...reading books. To get some of the business out of the way, I haven’t seen Burning, Shoplifters, Destroyer, Cold War, The Sisters Brothers, Tomb Raider, The Wife, or The House That Jack Built. Not all of us get screeners or care about seeing The Wife.  Mostly for argument purposes, I list everything I saw and divide the movies into the categories of Garbage, Admirable Failures, Endearing Curiosities with Big Flaws, Pretty Good Movies, Good Movies, Great Movies, and Instant Classics. Hey, speaking of superheroes:  GARBAGE

123. Venom (Ruben Fleischer)- Venom was first announced as an R-rated film until it was neutered into PG-13 at some point in the development road. That was the right choice because this is a movie, in all of its broad, careless storytelling, for children. "So he's going to get married to her but then he looks at her email and then he interviews the guy and he gets fired so then she leaves him and he drinks now?" This is a dummy's version of what a journalist is or what a scientist is, and it never shades into more subtlety than exactly what is on the expected surface. I guess that Tom Hardy gets to jump into a lobster tank if that floats your boat, but the story is stuck on fast-forward for the whole movie, never relenting to develop character or do anything other than communicate information that we don't really need.

Venom is almost--almost--interesting as a new branch in the superhero economy. Why shouldn't Tom Hardy and National Treasure Michelle Williams trade the equity they've built for caring about their work into this trash? I don't begrudge them that for a second. I hope they make more money for the sloppy sequels. 122. The Equalizer 2 (Antoine Fuqua)- The first Equalizer was flat and pointlessly long with pedantic dialogue too, but at least it had the Home Depot sequence. This one makes very basic stuff incoherent and dawdles all the way to the end. Your boy is now an expert hacker too? I guess it's too late for Fuqua to start caring about scripts.

121. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)- I need somebody to explain to me why, dramatically, this is good without something like, "It's so metal! What a midnight movie! Chainsaw fight lol!" If you want to talk about the visuals that are stylized within an inch of reality, then I'll listen. But there's nothing to hold onto dramatically. I think I've developed an overall irritation with revenge films, but this filthy dirge of a movie felt empty and endless by any standard. 120. Fifty Shades Freed (James Foley)- Its intentions are too guileless to upset me, but Fifty Shades Freed uses up the goodwill I sort of had for the first two by tugging the viewer relentlessly through conflict that always seems temporary. Part of the fun has always been how bizarre basic human interactions seem in this universe. (Has anyone ever returned from a vacation to be surprise-promoted?) But this entry expects way too much from its viewer's loyalty. 119. On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke)- There's supposed to be a disconnect to the behavior of the couple in On Chesil Beach, a movie that asks us to harken back to a time when newlyweds were so sexually innocent that they had trouble figuring out how to consummate a marriage. Their fumbling seems foreign to us, which is the point. But what's the excuse for none of the behavior in the movie ringing true to any human experience?

I'm talking about Florence refusing to tell her string quartet that she's engaged because she thinks they'll assume that her marriage will break up the group even though she's sure that it won't. I'm talking about her father, who feels the need to humiliate his son-in-law in tennis because that would prove that he's dominant over the boy in some way that being his employer does not already prove. I'm talking about a plot that literally would not exist if the characters had just engaged in one conversation that it seems like they would have had in the flashbacks, which frame them as a kind of open, reasonably affectionate, easy-going couple. But by all means, McEwan, change that whenever it suits you. 118. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona)- I reject the whole premise of this deliberate lowering of stakes that never rises above obligation. To paraphrase a Griffin Newman joke, it makes Jurassic Park 4 look like Jurassic Park 1.

While we're here though: Can I have a movie about the guy who compiled the guest list for the dino auction? I want to see a guy looking at a spreadsheet--or is it an Access file?--and getting to, like, Mark Cuban and weighing the options: "He probably has the $27 million to spare on weaponized recombinant DNA. He would definitely appreciate the wow factor of having his own Indoraptor. But is he more of a neutral evil or a chaotic evil? I guess I'll reserve a seat for him and send the invitation. If he says no, then he says no. Okay, we're still in the C's..."

117. Tag (Jeff Tomsic)- Tag is going to show up on a lot of "worst movies to ever win an Oscar" lists when Jeremy Renner wins an Oscar for it. 116. A-X-L (Oliver Daly)- This is a melodramatic movie about a weaponized robotic dog and the dirtbike kid who befriends it. Nothing wrong with that; a ten-year-old boy might like it, and there aren't enough movies specifically for that audience. But what's weird is how nonchalant the main character is about the whole thing. He immediately starts training this one-of-a-kind "war dog" android and imprints it with his DNA like this is a regular Tuesday. It's one of many things that is just kind of off in this picture.

This being a cheap genre film, you do get treated to those L.A. locations that have been around the block. I think the nondescript complex that houses Craine Industries is also the one from Sneakers and The Lawnmower Man. You know, Craine Industries, the company that is working on a $70 million prototype for the military but, because this is a cheap genre film, seems to have two employees.

I do think there's an interesting movie to be made about motocross. The movie kind of works when it's just about an underdog father and son fixing bikes, before it gets into all of the robot stuff. ADMIRABLE FAILURES

115. The Little Stranger (Lenny Abrahamson)- Dr. Faraday: "Wanna marry me?" Caroline: "Maybe. Do you actually love me?" Dr. Faraday: "Probably not." Caroline: "Hmm, I think I would marry you only as an excuse to go to London to get away from my dying mother and this crumbling house that probably has a ghost." Dr. Faraday: "Oh. Well, glad we're discussing it now because I want to marry you specifically to give me a reason to stay in this crumbling house that probably has a ghost. I'm drawn to it for some reason." Caroline: "Is it because you grew up poor?" Dr. Faraday: "Yes. All dry, cold British stuff ultimately comes down to that.

114. Damsel (David Zellner and Nathan Zellner)- Had I done my research, I wouldn't have watched this Zellner Brothers follow-up to Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, one of my least favorite films of that year. Like that movie, Damsel is a story of two halves, punctuated by a shocking moment that happens halfway through. Unfortunately nothing interesting happens before, and nothing interesting happens after. 113. Suspiria (Luca Guadignino)- This is a movie about duality that gets extended. English, German, and just a sprinkle of French. Six parts and an epilogue. A dual role (and a bit part). Personalities that clash until one pulls ahead. There are ideas here. But, especially considering I don't like the original Suspiria, I didn't find much to hold onto as a visceral experience. It's a long, foreboding sit. Guadagnino knows how to end his movies, but he still doesn't have much to say for the long middle parts. Shout-out to Amazon; I hope that, in some circuitous way, betting on maximalist Italians helps them to sell paper towels or whatever.

112. Early Man (Nick Park)- I still love the Aardman aesthetic, but this material was thin. It's too juvenile for adults and too adult for juveniles. 111. Beirut (Brad Anderson)- The screenplay takes an hour to set up what should have taken twenty minutes. Some of that time is dedicated to developing Hamm's burnt-out alcoholic wheeler-dealer, but he's a character we've seen a hundred times before anyway. Some shorthand would have done some good. Once the plot gets going, it's serviceable, but I was bored by that point. Pike and Hamm need to fire their managers. 110. Upgrade (Leigh Whannell)- I'll admit that I owed the film more attention than I gave it since I was nodding off the whole time, but nothing in the gloomy programmer interested me enough to want to go back.

109. Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence)- Good as a steamy blank check provocation from the director and star--not much else. I'm sure people will take down the easy target of Jen Larry's Russian accent, but they're ignoring just how much she tries in something like this. She is a gargantuan Movie Star who commands the screen, and a lot of that presence comes from the commitment of, say, learning how to ballet dance for what must have been months. She hasn't slept through a performance yet.

I didn't think this endless movie made much sense, especially near its conclusion. Perhaps it's my personal distaste for the way that spy movies introduce major plot points without so much as a music sting to guide you. As soon as anyone says the term "double agent," my brain turns off.

108. Hot Summer Nights (Elijah Bynum)- If you want to direct a music video, just direct a music video. I like all of the actors in this, but the filmmaker has nothing to say. 107. The First Purge (Gerard McMurray)- Even James DeMonaco seems to be admitting that the bloom is off the rose a bit, since he only wrote this entry in the franchise--and his direction is missed in the action scenes. Just enough of the political subtext remains, (The New Founding Fathers get funding from the NRA, and a character uses "pussy-grabbing" as an insult. Thankfully, a Black church getting shot up by men with Iron Cross flags happens off-screen.)

But there are more characters I didn't care about than characters I did care about. Since its prequel setting doesn't reveal much about the world that we didn't already know, the film needed to do a bit more with the survive-the-night scenario that we already saw in the second film.

106. Vox Lux (Brady Corbet)- A movie that, up to and including the last minute, keeps promising something better than it actually is. Everyone here is making...choices… 105. Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker)- I'm glad David Ehrlich liked this as much as he did. There are some intriguing ideas, most notably the suggestion that a mentally unstable person would be better suited for acting than a healthy person. What a debut for Helena Howard as well. But for it to add up to something by the end, I think I needed it to have more dramatic structure--the sort of fall of the Molly Parker character feels invented and insincere--or go all the way into experiment. 104. Shirkers (Sandi Tan)- One of those "you won't believe what happens next" documentaries that positions itself as an example of truth being stranger than fiction. But removed from a festival context, does it ever rise above its logline? Is it really even that odd?