It seems like Helen Hunt has been pretty much MIA from the Hollywood scene for a few years, and now she’s making her return by pulling double duty as both the director and star of Then She Found Me. At least she’s been busy during her downtime!

Hunt plays a middle-aged woman who’s life takes a nasty turn when she realizes her chances of having a baby are quickly dwindling, her adoptive mother dies, her husband (Matthew Broderick) leaves her, and her birth mother with boundary issues (Bette Midler) shows up (if I found out Bette Midler was my real mother, I’d be having a pretty rough time, too). But things start to look better when she begins a relationship with Colin Firth (from Broderick to Firth; talk about an upgrade!). And of course her life takes another dip when in a moment of weakness she sleeps with her estranged husband, and it leads to a pregnancy. Now Hunt needs to figure out how to make things work with Firth, how to incorporate Broderick into the life of their child, and how to deal with her new overbearing and oversharing mother. Sounds like fun. Or maybe it just sounds trite and predictable. I’ll have to RENT IT to find out.

Then She Found Me is rated R and opens in limited release April 25. (Official site)

As I promised in my Sweeney Todd trailer review, I’m going to tell you to go see Mamma Mia! this summer. I’ve seen it on Broadway (at the request of my ABBA-loving mother) and can sum up the show in a few brief words: cheesy, unsubstantial, and bloody good fun.

The story is as flimsy as tissue paper: Girl wants her dad to attend her upcoming wedding, but she doesn’t know who he is. She finds three possibilities by digging into her mother’s sordid past, and invites them all to the wedding. They all show up, mom gets flustered, girl attempts to find out which one is her dad, lots of silly singing and dancing ensues.

But as most Mamma Mia! fans will tell you, the story doesn’t matter, it’s all about the music. The show was constructed around the tunes of everyone’s favorite 70’s Swedish pop group, ABBA (if you can’t at least admit that “Dancing Queen” is a catchy tune, you may have no soul). And in trying to create a show around preexisting songs, some (OK, a lot) of artistic license is taken with the storyline.

While the stage show is certainly entertaining, I’m somewhat concerned about how well it’ll translate to film. What makes the stage show so entertaining is the fact that it’s all live; you feel like you’re at an ABBA cover band concert. Audience members can even sing along and dance in the aisles at the end of the show. So how well will this translate to the screen, where you’re supposed to sit in the dark, quietly, and watch actors who are unable to feed off the audience’s energy? I don’t know, but I’ll be at the theaters to SEE IT opening weekend and find out.

Mamma Mia! is not yet rated and opens July 18. (IMDB page)

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty disappointed with the selection of trailers coming out for the fall. Let’s start toting out the big holiday film and Oscar bait trailers! So rather than continuing to struggle to find a trailer I’m into enough to do a full length review on, here are three big dramas coming out with just a brief recap of each.

Up first is Eastern Promises. There are several things I would never want to come face to face with in a dark alley, and two of them are the Russian mafia and Viggo Mortensen. So a movie that stars Mortensen as a member of the Russian mafia is bound to be a tense one. Naomi Watts also stars as a midwife who attempts to translate the Russian diary of a young girl who dies while giving birth under her care. Apparently, she should learn to just leave well enough alone, since translating said diary seems to really upset some pretty scary Eastern Europeans. David Cronenberg, who directed Mortensen in A History of Violence, directs, and if Violence is any indication of what these two men can do together, Eastern Promises should be a very intense drama. But still not one I’ll be paying $11 to see. RENT IT

Eastern Promises is rated R and opens September 21 (Official site).

Next is Reservation Road, a drama that centers around the tragic death of a child and is based off a novel I have yet to read. Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly are the couple whose son is killed by a hit-and-run driver. Mark Ruffalo is the hit-and-run driver, as well as a law associate. Ruffalo then finds himself helping in the hunt for justice when his law office is hired by Phoenix to help find the driver who took his son’s life. With this cast and this subject matter, make sure you keep tissues nearby. RENT IT

Reservation Road is rated R and opens October 19.

Finally, is When Did You Last See Your Father? As I’ve stated before, I love family dramas and I love Colin Firth, so I’ll definitely be checking this one out. The father in question is Firth’s, and is played by Jim Broadbent. There doesn’t seem to be much more to this film than a strained father-son relationship and a trip down memory lane when the father is dying of cancer…kind of like Big Fish, but without the fantasy element. Nevertheless, I plan on eventually checking it out, all for my love of Firth. RENT IT

When Did You Last See Your Father? is rated PG-13 and opens in February 2008 (Official site).

If you like historical action movies rife with historical inaccuracies, The Last Legion may be your cup of tea. It tells the story of the fall of the Roman empire and the beginning of the legend of the sword in the stone (aka the legend of King Arthur). There are lots of dirty men in breastplates with swords yelling a lot and one mandatory hot chick. Why there must always be a hot chick in every action movie, I’ll never know, but there she is anyway.

Despite this lackluster trailer, I’ll probably still RENT IT for one reason. Colin Firth. The same sort of admiration/respect/lust I have for Daniel Day-Lewis, I also have for Colin Firth. Unfortunately, it looks like he was completely miscast in this movie. Colin Firth can be a dramatic lead, a love interest, and even quite funny (in that dry, British sort of way). But can he be an action hero? My Spidey-sense says ‘no’, but I’ll still give him a chance. It can’t be any worse than Nanny McPhee, right?

The Last Legion is rated PG-13 and may or may not open on August 24 (there’s some debate going on about the US release date). (IMDB page-the official site is in Russian)