Attractions: Does Iron Man 2 Have the Muscle to Knock Off Babies?

Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and record-threatening at the movies. This week, a much-anticipated band of charismatic heroes arrives in theaters, while elsewhere, Iron Man 2 will attempt to eclipse The Dark Knight as the opening-weekend box-office king. And yes, there is refuge at the art house. We have a lot to get to; let's get started!

WHAT'S NEW: In case you missed it Thursday, the column space here that would have gone to Iron Man 2 box-office projections was outsourced to a first-ever Movieline mini-roundtable. There, it was determined that Marvel's blockbuster sequel would finish somewhere in the $130 million to $150-million-plus range -- depends whom you ask, and if mothers across the country decide it's an acceptable way to spend their Sunday. ("Oh, don't worry about me," they'll say as their young ones and husbands ditch them in the parking-lot dust, shouting back over their shoulders that they'll "save you a seeeeeaaaaat...") It also depends on whether or not Babies can live up to its reputation as the Death Star of Mother's Day movies, capturing ovaries en masse in its tractor beam of cute. It can probably do at least $6,000 average on 534 screens, which amounts to an even $3.2 million. If it can actually harness a true counterprogramming resistance -- particularly on Sunday -- Babies may cross the $4 million threshold without breaking much of a sweat.

There's some alternative action in the indie realm, too, where the Annette Bening/Naomi Watts/Kerry Washington adoption drama Mother and Child does its own lady-courting (at least until that interminable Watts/Samuel L. Jackson love scene, which is like whoooaaa enough already I got half a bucket of popcorn I still gotta eat here). That's on a handful of NYC/L.A. screens, with expansion planned in the weeks ahead. And hey! Here's a treat for Mom: The Human Centipede expands to 18 theaters this weekend! Truly nothing else on the market can surpass this most touching, tender, ass-to-mouthiest of gifts.

Let's see, what else... Good grief! It's an avalanche: There's the French spy spoof OSS 117: Lost in Rio; the Timothy Hutton midlife-crisis comedy Multiple Sarcasms; and the hippie-commune coming-of-age tale Happiness Runs opening in both New York and L.A. And a fistful of others opening in NYC only (for now): The powerful al-Qaeda alumni documentary The Oath; Harmony Korine's latest provocation Trash Humpers; the semi-animated cancer-sanctuary drama Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then; the East Germany recollection DDR/DDR; the French immigrant drama Welcome; and the stockbroker documentary Floored. Meanwhile in L.A., the nifty burlesque chronicle Behind the Burly Q makes it to theaters, as does Scott Caan's writer-in-love drama Mercy.

THE BIG LOSER: Frankly, I'm less interested in Iron Man 2's chances at breaking the opening-weekend record than I am in A Nightmare on Elm Street's chances at having the single biggest week-two drop for any film to open over 3,000 screens. I'd say it's a fairly long shot at this point (Friday the 13th currently holds the record at 80.4 percent), but by all accounts Nightmare is going to wind up in the growing pile of Blockbuster Trash with a plunge of at least 75 percent -- coming to rest right around $8 million (or less).

THE UNDERDOG: It's depressing in the moment, but consider the thought-provoking long tail sure to ensue from Alex Gibney's definitive Jack Abramoff documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money. Tracking the disgraced lobbyist and GOP power broker from his neocon days in the Young Republicans through his stint in B-movie producing into his staggering success as Washington's most efficient (and corrupt) influence peddler, Gibney doesn't just slather on the details. He point-blank asks: "Is this what we've come to?" It remains an open question -- and not a cynical one, either. Casino Jack boasts exactly the kind of class, intelligence and thoroughness demanded of political storytelling in 2010. May all of Washington -- and all of us -- have the fortitude to see this bankrupt system through Gibney's unflinching lens. Now more than ever, we need it.