Happy Friday! Now that all the "real" news is out of the way, let's focus on the things we really care about -- namely, that Jodie Foster's estranged 89-year-old father Lucius was sentenced to five years in jail for taking $130,000 in down payments for homes he never built. That's naughty, Mr. Foster! Be in prison now. In honor of this sacred occasion, let's reflect on Jodie Foster's worst parents in film. I know my pick.
OK, Iris in Taxi Driver was definitely a 12-year-old prostitute, but her parents were cool enough to send Travis Bickle a letter of thanks for saving her from the streets. They get a pass. My vote goes to Jodie's parents in the bizarre, distinctly Canadian 1976 "horror" film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, where Jodie plays Rynn Jacobs, a mysterious girl who lives in a secluded New England town without parental supervision. She tells incomers lies about her poet father's whereabouts, but the truth is (spoiler!) that he bought Rynn a hidden house so that her abusive mother wouldn't find her -- and then he committed suicide after becoming terminally ill. WHAT. Couldn't he have set up her up with some better care than... isolation? Because even though Rynn's mother isn't in the picture, a local pedophile (Martin Sheen!) keeps bursting into her house to hang out with her. He enters through a basement hatch sometimes. I don't understand either.
Am I missing a better option? Or is it Jodie's lonely idyll for the win?