okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

I am ashamed to say it, but I never really started watching Jodie Foster until like the last 5 years. Sure there are other actresses, Sally Field for example, which made an interesting transition over to television and delivers one compelling performance after another in “Brothers and Sisters” or Calista Flockhart, who never really had to make the transition into film, and hasn’t lost anything, though her role on “Brothers and Sisters” is eerily reminiscent to that of Ally McBeal. I’m even a fan of actresses like Dena Delaney, for personal reasons, but Jodie Foster is an actress I had never fully begun to appreciate until I saw her in Panic Room.

I was compelled to purchase the DVD of Panic Room because it was in the superbit format, an experimental way for Sony to try to bring high-definition quality to regular DVDs. The superb audio of the film, the special effects in the opening sequences and the scenes of New York drew me into the film like nothing else, and I was sucked into the matrix. It was one of those films that had a commanding presence and moved slowly, suggesting a horror that was right around the corner.

It was one of those films that your girl gets up and walks out of the room or talks on the phone until the right music or sound commands everyone’s attention. I think my wife may have watched it twice, I watched it like 15 times. Jodie Foster was supposedly hot in that movie, a joke about the appearances of “my girlfriends” in movies like Christina Ricci, of which, well okay I’ve watched perhaps 12 of her movies but I haven’t trolled about and hunted down all of the classics; attempts to screw with my mind I tell you, lol. Nonetheless, determined, I turn the sound up, and immerse myself in the feel of the movie, and Foster’s commanding performance.

Foster has a determined presence, a casual feel, yet at times a questionable “am I really comfortable in my own skin” ethos that makes her new movies compelling. People question if she really knows what she is talking about in movies like Panic Room and Flight Plan; her resolve to make things right plays like a feminist ethos to be taken seriously. This is quite different from younger actors like Ricci and Erika Christensen that are often put in roles that play up ideas about schizophrenic behavior, and is part of what made Julia Styles interesting when she was acting, in fact the only other actress I’ve seen this with of late was Charlize Theron in Monster.

But Foster has been around for year, delivering stellar performances when I was running around learning how to speak and looking out from the wooden bars of the crib. Movies like Taxi Driver, The Accused, and The Silence of the Lambs are excellent films where Jodie shares the stage with other actors and you often forget about just how great of an actress she is. Unfortunately movies like The Inside Man feature her same signature presence, but are not the blockbuster hits that everyone is talking about.

The future seems to have Jodie Foster working more as a director, which to me the implications are rather fascinating. We need a female Clint Eastwood, an actress that can find even more respect and create better films as a director with work that will make their performances in films seem pale by comparison. Yet to date the only really great film people seem to remember a woman director by is Lost in Translation, not a personal favorite of mine, though the art direction was stunning and enough of a reason to watch the film. A seasoned Scarlett Johansson delivers a great performance, though one overshadowed by that of Bill Murray, whose performance suggested he had just been sitting back and soaking up greatness over the years. Once again, the reasons why we enjoy films so much is brought back to mind …