Release Date: July 1

Director: Michael Mann

Writers: Ronan Bennett and Michael Mann & Ann Biderman

Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard

Cinematographer: Dante Spinotti

Studio/Run Time: Universal Pictures, 140 mins.

20th Century gangsters through a 21st Century lens

Early reviewers are shrugging their shoulders at the new Michael Mann, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale film, Public Enemies, but it’s miles better than Terminator Salvation or any other gun-blazing film you could pick at random from the first half of the summer crop. It’s more entertaining, more thought provoking, and were it shot on film I bet it’d be more acclaimed.

Mos Def returns from long strange trip with excitingly coherent new album

At this point, you could be forgiven for knowing Mos Def as an actor rather than a musician. His name was synonymous with the late '90s’ resurgence of politically pugnacious hip-hop, but after his equally era-defining label, Rawkus Records, was absorbed into Interscope, Mos went mainstream as a thespian and plumbed new depths of self-indulgent awfulness as a musician. His latest, The Ecstatic, arrives on the 10-year anniversary of his classic debut, Black on Both Sides. Anniversaries are a time for reflection, and for long stretches of the album, Mos remembers with a start that he’s an exceptionally talented rapper. The rootless “experimental” gambits that plagued 2006 train-wreck True Magic crop up occasionally—the Spanish-language track “No Way Nada Mas” (cool idea, but rapping in Spanish doesn’t mean you have to sound like Slowpoke Rodriguez), the cheesy patois of “Workers Comp”, and a smattering of karaoke-caliber singing. But on “Twilite Speedball,” “Quiet Dog Bite Hard,” “Life in Marvelous Times,” and many others, he rivets his limber flow to the beat and effortlessly produces the kind of good-natured braggadocio and gymnastic wordplay of his glory days. This isn’t the only sign that Mos is looking back—there’s a great cameo from old-school legend Slick Rick, and a reunion track with Talib Kweli, his former partner in the group Black Star (called “History,” no less). But it’s also modern, with the kind of exotic pan-global production (from Euro-club to Turkish-psych) that’s a must in the post-Timbaland era. (But Mos, why no Auto-Tune? It’s okay now!) That’s what we call re-centering. Even the Malcolm X sample that opens the album can’t quell the feeling that Mos’ revolutionary capital is long-since spent, but it’s good to know that he can still save his music, if not the world.

Crude (snake) oil by the barrelful

If the mom-and-pop gas station is dead, Wilco is its funereal knell. The I-75 WilcoHess service plaza of Jackson, Ga. (renamed after the longtime rivals set aside their creative differences and formed a diesel-pumping supergroup), postures itself as an erudite foil to the glossy, prefab, overproduced fueling stations that dot the highways and byways of this nation. My recent stop at this Wilco station exposed the true nature of this façade. Wilco (The Gas Station) runs on a series of clumsily executed pop-philosophy clichés that reflect the sensibilities of a once-great truck-stop empire in its twilight, struggling for relevance in a world it no longer understands.

New Wilco concert film presents a disarmingly modest sampling of the band’s recent road life

I should acknowledge up front that I am one of the crusty and presumably dwindling number of Wilco fans that still generally prefers them as something closer to an alt.country or power-pop band. I miss the raucous Replacements-lite energy of the Being There tour. I think they just about nailed it with Summerteeth but have been marginally over-indulged ever since. I always felt that some of the production touches and vague avant-gardeisms on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot weakened the album. As insanely talented as they are, I tend to think drummer Glenn Kotche and guitarist Nels Cline frequently overload songs that don’t always benefit from the weight of their technique. Sky Blue Sky is occasionally beautiful but somehow leaves me cold. I miss Jay Bennett.

Release Date: June 24

Director: Michael Bay

Writers: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman

Cinematographer: Ben Seresin

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel

Studio/Run Time: 150 minutes

The unintentional genius of Michael Bay

Director Michael Bay has accomplished something incredible with Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. No filmmaker since Stanley Kubrick has so perfectly captured the zeitgeist of an anxious, enervated and testosterone-poisoned society. Bay’s crowning achievement with this cinematic landfill is that he managed to do it unintentionally. Beat that, Kubrick.