Natascha McElhone Movies

This unusual biography of the renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a Merchant-Ivory film. The team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been responsible for many period dramas, including A Room with a View and Howard's End. The story of Picasso's remarkable misanthropy is told as experienced by his mistress Francoise Gilot (Natasha McElhone). Francoise was Picasso's lover from 1944 to 1954, and they had two children together, Claude and Paloma. The film shows Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) as a notorious womanizer, with flashbacks revealing his relationships with his wife Olga (Jane Lapotaire), the artist Dora Marr (Julianne Moore), and Marie-Therese Walter (Susannah Harker), an earthy type who sees the artist only on Sundays. Hopkins powerfully portrays Picasso as an artistic genius with an appalling habit of using and abusing women. He not only cheats on his wife but two-times his mistresses. Francoise has survived an abusive relationship with her father (Bob Peck), and she is 40 years younger than Picasso when they become lovers. The film was supposed to be based on Gilot's book Life with Picasso, but the filmmakers were unable to get the rights to it, so they settled for basing the film on Arianna Huffington's Picasso: Creator and Destroyer. The movie also uses imitations rather than Picasso's real paintings. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

A policeman plays Good Samaritan to a visitor from Ireland, only to discover that he has a potentially deadly secret. Belfast-born Frankie McGuire (Brad Pitt) saw his father gunned down by enemy soldiers at the age of eight, and when he grew up he joined the Irish Republican Army, determined that one day his father's death would be avenged. An especially ruthless "volunteer," Frankie is responsible for the death of 13 British soldiers and 11 policemen. After a particularly bloody battle, Frankie sails to the United States in a ragged tugboat he has restored; with a huge bundle of cash, Frankie intends to buy a stock of Stinger missiles from an underground arms dealer in America, Billy Burke (Treat Williams). Upon arrival in New York, Frankie is met by a judge who is sympathetic to the IRA's cause and who arranges a place for him to stay. Using the name Rory Devaney, Frankie moves into the home of Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford), a scrupulously honest cop. Tom is already in the midst of a personal crisis; his friend and partner Edwin Diaz (Ruben Blades) recently shot a man that he knew was unarmed in the line of duty, and while Edwin wants Tom to help him cover up the matter, Tom's conscience will not allow it. When Tom begins to realize that "Rory" is not simply a man running from the violence of his homeland, he's torn between his sympathy for Frankie's tragic childhood and his desire to see justice served and prevent needless death in Ireland. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Peter Weir directed this comedy-drama, a commentary on all-pervasive media manipulation. Scripted by Andrew M. Niccol (Gattaca), the film plays like a combination of the British TV series The Prisoner and Paul Bartel's The Secret Cinema. Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is unaware that his entire life is a hugely popular 24-hour-a-day TV series. In this real-time documentary, every moment of Truman's existence is captured by concealed cameras and telecast to a giant global audience. His friends and family are actors who smile pleasantly at Truman's familiar catchphrase greeting, "In case I don't see you later, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" Employed at an insurance company, Truman is married to merry Meryl (Laura Linney), and they live in the cheerful community of Seahaven, an island "paradise" where the weather is always mild and no unpleasantness intrudes. This is the basic situation of the series, which has grown over the years into a billion-dollar franchise for the TV network. As an unwanted pregnancy, Truman was adopted by the network and raised in the zoolike environment of a TV soundstage. Thus, the TV audience became hooked when Truman was very young. Now, at age 30, he still doesn't know he's a prisoner on an immense domed city-size soundstage, simulating Seahaven. Both the illusion and the ratings will collapse if Truman ever leaves Seahaven. In addition to elaborate events staged to make sure he stays put, Truman is given constant reminders of how wonderful Seahaven is compared to dangers in other parts of the world. However, his growing suspicions make him curious enough to try to leave, and the show's director and master manipulator Christof (Ed Harris) must constantly devise ways to thwart Truman's escape attempts. To enter the harbor, Truman must overcome his fear of water, intentionally instilled in him when his father "died" in a boating accident and was written out of the script. Exteriors were filmed in the Victorian-styled upscale community of Seaside, Florida. In addition to the Burkhard Dallwitz score, original music by Philip Glass and classical excerpts are also featured. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In this science fiction thriller, David Whitman (William Hurt) is a chemist who lost his wife and child in a freak accident and is trying to rebuild his life on his own. While doing research, Whitman discovers a series of mysterious deaths that seem to follow in the path of Joseph Mueller (Peter Weller), a seemingly ordinary man who works as a security guard. Unknown to Mueller, his body carries a strange contaminant that's deadly to many people, and Whitman is desperate to find Mueller and stop him before he can cause more deaths. But he discovers there's more to Mueller's story than he ever imagined. The Contaminated Man also stars Michael Brandon and Natascha McElhone. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Terror is lurking online in this thriller directed by William Malone, who also helmed the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill. Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) is a NYPD detective who has been assigned to look into a string of murders which have taken place in Manhattan, with Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone), a researcher from the city Department of Health, lending her assistance whether Reilly likes it or not. Reilly discovers that all four victims have one thing in common -- they were all men who logged on to the same Internet website exactly 48 hours before they were killed. It seems the website features a sexy woman offering kinky fun to those who enter her domain, but clicking the wrong icon takes users on a journey into fear. Reilly decides the only way to find out the truth is to head into the website and find out what follows for the next two days -- if he can make it out alive. Fear dot com also stars Stephen Rea, Jeffrey Combs, and Udo Kier. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A therapist travels to a distant space station to treat a group of astronauts traumatized by mysterious entities -- and ends up having to deal with an entity of his own -- in this second film version of Stanislaw Lem's philosophical sci-fi novel. Solaris stars George Clooney as Chris Kelvin, a psychologist still mourning the loss of his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) when he's implored by a colleague named Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur) to investigate the increasingly weird goings-on at the Prometheus space station. By the time Kelvin gets there, Gibarian has committed suicide, leaving only the cryptic, babbling Snow (Jeremy Davies) and the paranoid, guarded Gordon (Viola Davis), both of whom are holed up in their respective rooms. As Kelvin interrogates the skeleton crew, he learns that they've had unwanted "visitors," apparitions of long-dead friends, family, and loved ones who are apparently being generated by the interstellar energy source Solaris. The doctor is dubious of their claims until one night he, too, is greeted by his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone), whose death still torments him. At first skeptical of the new Rheya, Kelvin gradually becomes obsessed with her -- and with the guilt that he feels over their troubled marriage -- to the point where the others begin to fear for his sanity. Produced by James Cameron, Solaris represented director Steven Soderbergh's first screenplay credit since the independently financed Schizopolis in 1996. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

U.K. documentary filmmaker Philippa Lowthorpe brings an experimental approach to the costume drama The Other Boleyn Girl, produced for television by BBC Films. Shot with a handheld digital camera, the film is a largely improvised project based on the best-selling novel by Philippa Gregory. In 16th century England, the recently married Mary Boleyn (Natascha McElhone) is encouraged to have an affair with the notorious King Henry VIII (Jared Harris) in order to improve the power of her family. When she gets pregnant, the king turns his attention to her sister Anne Boleyn (Jodhi May). Learning to play by the degrading rules of the king's court, Anne conspires with her brother George (Steven Mackintosh) to produce a male heir. The Other Boleyn Girl first aired on BBC Two March 28, 2003. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Two sisters engage in a subtle war for the affections of a man half their age in this British comedy drama. It's 1936, and Janet Widdington (Maggie Smith) and her sister, Ursula (Judi Dench), are a pair of elderly spinsters who share a home in Cornwall on the coast of England. After a storm, the sisters discover that someone has been washed up on the beach in front of their house. Bringing the body inside, they discover the victim is a handsome Polish man named Andrea Marowski (Daniel Brühl) who has suffered a broken ankle and speaks no English, only Polish and German. As the sisters patch up Andrea's ankle, Janet dusts off her old German textbook from school, and begins getting to know more about their guest. It isn't long before Janet develops an infatuation for the good-looking stranger, and attempts to teach him English, which is more than a bit maddening to Ursula, who has fallen head over heels for him -- especially after the sisters discover he's a gifted violinist and hear him display his craft on a borrowed instrument. As the sisters find themselves vying for Andrea's attention, they wonder if they should report his presence to the authorities, especially after Olga (Natascha McElhone), an attractive woman in her early thirties who lives nearby, becomes aware of Andrea's presence in the home and wants to make contact with him. Based on a short story by William J. Locke, Ladies in Lavender marked the directorial debut of actor Charles Dance. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Jean-Baptiste Andrea's wicked, jet-black comic thriller Big Nothing stars Friends mainstay David Schwimmer as Charlie Wood, a onetime American professor now married to a policewoman, Penelope (Natascha McElhone) and living in Oregon. As the story opens, Charlie takes a job as a telephone operator at an Information Technology call support center, but is promptly fired for making offensive comments to a customer. One of Charlie's shadier co-workers, Gus Dickinson (Simon Pegg) wheedles him into his plan to blackmail a priest, Rev. Smalls (Mitchell Mullen) by using "inside" information from the company that demonstrates the minister's obsession with internet porn. Thus begins an endless series of Mametian twists and turns involving double-cross, mistaken identity, forced drownings, poisonings, infidelities and cold-blooded mariticide, as the men attempt to collect on the money but run head-first into one outrageous conflict after another. Alice Eve, Mimi Rogers and Jon Polito co-star; Andrea and William Asher co-authored the script. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Chris O'Donnell, Michael Keaton, and Alfred Molina star in this television mini-series event adapted from the book by Robert Littell and brought to the screen by cinematographer-turned-director Mikael Salomon (Salem's Lot and Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor). An epic thriller that traces the timeline of the CIA from the Berlin Base of the 1950s through to the Gorbachev putsch, The Company details the struggles of agents caught between double lives, that war waged against an enemy as immoral as it is elusive, and the internal battles that threatened to destroy "The Company" from the inside out. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide