Attractions: Zombies Crave Brains! (And George Romero Has a New Film, Too)

Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and/or apocalyptically horrid at the movies. This week offers a holiday tentpole duel it seems most people can do without, while a clutch of indies scrap it out for supremacy in limited release. So put down the barbecue tongs and get friggin' dressed already! There are reasons to leave the house this weekend.

WHAT'S NEW: So you might have heard about a little flick called Sex and the City 2, a continuation of the tale of Carrie Bradshaw and friends as they drift further from their TV series' randy comic sexcapades into the pesky ennui of relationshipcapades, menopausecapades, and whatever else is afflicting the gals as they plunk into middle age. A number of critics have filed this under "Fates Worse Than Death," yet attendance at midnight showings ahead of Thursday's opening was up something like 20 percent over that of its 2008 predecessor. That can mean only one thing: Estrogextravaganza! (Apologies this morning to Noah Webster! Oh, and to the gay SATC fan base as well; you are not taken for granted.) Also, something like 600 of this weekend's screening are reportedly sold out, which means little beyond the prospect for this to blow the eff up today and Saturday before plunnnnnging Sunday and Monday. All told we're talking about maybe $81 million for a five-day-long fart that would shatter a Guinness record were it emitted from the ass of anyone but a Hollywood executive. As my Italian grandmother used to say from her heavily drugged hospice cocoon, "That's-a... entertain-a... ment... a... [flatline]."

And then there's Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. If only Granny had lived to see those 8-bit Nintendo abs rendered as rippling brownface flesh. Gemma Arterton's not bad, either -- but it's not like either of them can open a beer bottle let alone a blockbuster, so it's really down to producer Jerry Bruckheimer's commitment to Middle Eastern mythology by way of video-game wankery. Audiences should repay that commitment accordingly with around $49 million over four days, give or take the $5 million it might cost Disney for the "top-kill" method of stanching that hormonal gusher polluting the Gulf of Multiplex.

Also opening: Alejandro Amenabar's ultra-ambitious Alexandrian love-triangle/faith-science clash epic Agora; Jean-Pierre Jeunet's whimsy orgy Micmacs; the loosely true family tragedy The Father of My Children (expanding to NYC); the insect-culture doc Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (expanding to L.A.); and limited to NYC, the North Korea mockumentary The Juche Idea and the cubism-meets-film doc Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies.

THE BIG LOSER: One of two things will happen this weekend to MacGruber: It will either crash more than 60 percent to around $1.5 million, or... OK. One of one things will happen this weekend to MacGruber.

THE UNDERDOG: George A. Romero is good these days for about one Dead film every couple years, and Survival of the Dead is the best yet of this renewed cycle. It's got more humor, more shocking gore, more emphatic commitment from his actors, and it's more ideologically sound than anything Romero's done since possibly Day of the Dead. Basically, imagine an Us vs. Them culture not too removed from contemporary U.S. politics, with zombies as the misunderstood immigrants attempting to cross the border into a better life -- which may, in the end, be an eternity of drudgery, but hey. Nobody does this kind of winking nihilism better than Romero, and Survival of the Dead is one of his more inspired episodes. And, in the lengthening shadow of Arizona public policy, it's prescient as hell.