A friend broke the bad news to me the other day that, based on my affection for Hancock, I clearly am exhibiting all the signs of a full-on Will Smith crush. I guess I’ll double my dosage of daily vitamins.

Hancock (Columbia Pictures)

Whatever you want to say about Will Smith, at least you can't accuse him of playing the same role twice or always giving the same performance. Hancock isn't I Am Legend, which wasn't The Pursuit of Happyness, which wasn't Hitch. And he doesn't make the mistake of simply trying something different just to do it – there's probably no other big star who throws himself into different roles so completely without making it seem hard. (He doesn't do the Tom Cruise thing of trying to win "degree of difficulty" points when he stretches.) This is all my way of saying that as inconsequential as Hancock is, it's actually pretty nervy – not just his performance, which is funny and misanthropic without overselling it, but the whole movie, which keeps churning from idea to idea, getting more emotionally interesting as it rolls along. Some of the film’s crudeness seems like a sop to the teen boys who are counted on if the movie's gonna hit $300 million, but this is a superhero movie whose mythology is clever without being horribly convoluted – Unbreakable without breaking a sweat. And, contrary to what I'd heard, the second half isn't where it falls apart but actually where it becomes poignant and thoughtful. And for the umpteenth time, let's hear it for Jason Bateman. Whether it's Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium or Juno or Hancock, he keeps pushing himself by playing regular guys who aren't ever as simple as they first appear. There's not much to this movie, but what's there is very, very satisfying.

Wanted (Universal Pictures)

Silly and knowing and well-acted and genuinely exciting, Shoot 'Em Up was generally dismissed as garbage. Excessive and dull but decorated with an A-level cast that gives it cache, Wanted is a piece of crap. Or, to use the witless parlance of the film, a motherfucking piece of shit, you pussy. I'm not opposed to violence, comic-book movies, or willful offensiveness, but if that's all the film's selling, it'd better deliver. Instead, Wanted recycles the last 30 years of fanboy nerdom – a powerless young man discovers his destiny by digging into his father issues – and then adds a nice layer of nihilism on top to prove what? That the deaths of tons of innocent bystanders in your movie's best action set piece don't matter because it's totally awesome? That boring characters don't mean a thing as long as you project a general distaste for humanity anyway? That the best way to sidestep the charges of pretentiousness that were thrown at The Matrix and Fight Club is to dispense with ideas all together? Shoot 'Em Up wasn’t perfect, but it worked both as a satire of B-movie pulp and a fine entry in the genre. Wanted tells me that I should shut my mouth, man up, and get off on the kick-ass coolness of it all. Otherwise, I risk seeming like a square who doesn't get it. Fuck that.

Garden Party (Roadside Attractions)

Living in Los Angeles is tough enough in terms of dealing with the endless comings-and-goings of wannabes – you hear them strategizing in coffee shops, you're stuck behind them in the concession stand at theaters. So watching a group of young people trying to make their way in the City of Angels – realtors, songwriters, dancers, actors, all-around perverts – isn't my idea of a great night out. That Garden Party just about pulls it off is rather remarkable – writer-director Jason Freeland does it by bypassing the glamour and insider-speak and instead focusing on the city's slimier aspects. His Los Angeles is the one east of the major freeways, littered with trash and sleazy individuals preying on the naive newcomers to the region. Freeland doesn't have much to say about his collection of individuals crisscrossing around town looking for love and/or a break, but for a while anyway, at least he's honest about the base weirdness of these people. But a little kinkiness can't make up for obvious storytelling elsewhere – not to mention a totally unbelievable happy ending for this group of (mostly) lost souls.

Erykah Badu, New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War) (Universal Motown)

Now that I’m one of the many listeners who pumps all his new albums into his iTunes, letting songs from across the musical spectrum battle it out on shuffle, I’ve become a big believer in the philosophy that good music will rise to the top, no matter how far down you bury it. Excited about the advance praise for New Amerykah but overall more of an admirer than a lover of Erykah Badu’s previous work, I popped it into the computer and sorta forgot about it. Except shuffle kept bringing it to my attention, and every time a New Amerykah song came on, I was impressed … but then moved on to the next selection. Wow, was I in for a treat, then, when I consumed the album the old-fashioned way – threw the CD into the car stereo and went for a ride. With even the album’s weakest tracks high in quality and sophistication, this is funk that’s varied, personal, highly nimble, thoughtful and graceful. And when there aren’t other artists’ songs butting in, the flow of the thing is simply astounding – like the best of Mama’s Gun without the slow spots, it embodies the soul and spirit of an ambitious woman whose pretentious digressions are thrilling because, hey, they’re coming from such an inspired source. The weirder New Amerykah gets, the more I pondered whether or not Badu might be a little crazy in the mad-genius mode of Brian Wilson, but on further reflection, I decided that she wasn’t crazy – she was brave, willing to throw it all out there for the listening public. That’s why her shout-out to Louis Farrakhan comes across not as militant or provocative but sympathetic – when she’s at the top of her game like this, she can get away with just about anything. The snarky will note this album came out almost five months ago. To which I say, yes, I’m sorry, and I’m trying to make amends now – and that some people still haven’t heard it and really should.

R.E.M., Accelerate (Warner Bros.)

Bassist Mike Mills is right when he complains that journalists are pigeonholing Accelerate as a “return to form”: Precisely what R.E.M. album of yore does this one emulate? Tracing “Mr. Richards” to Monster, “Until the Day Is Done” to Automatic for the People, and (in a stretch) “I’m Gonna DJ” to Document, I was kinda stumped. Lacking the lackadaisical wandering of their early-‘80s records or the Byrds-ian grit of their late ‘80s efforts, but less assertive than their first Warner Bros. albums, Accelerate is ultimately an extension of the period everybody hates of theirs: the post-Bill Berry triptych of Up, Reveal and Around the Sun. Heavy on atmospherics and low on essential songs, those three albums are the product of famous musicians trying to rediscover their relevance. Accelerate’s they’re-finally-rocking! buzz means to distance it from those other albums, but even with hotshot producer Jacknife Lee doing whatever it is that he does, this new one is still a spiritual cousin. Seeing them live, I enjoyed every Accelerate tune, but with their compact crunch – only two songs on the album are over four minutes, and one is the worst of the bunch – they sorta whiz by, more attitude than meaningful message. You could argue that all R.E.M. albums are concept records of a kind – Monster the glam album, Out of Time the love album, Document the political album, and so on – which would mean that Accelerate is what? Their approximation of what rock sounds like in the 21st century? I’m coming down too hard on this album, I know, and I don’t mean to. But in a career that’s been about following their muse wherever the heck it wants to go, Accelerate is the first time R.E.M. has come close to sounding simply professional. Best-case scenario: This revival of their commercial fortunes will embolden them the next time out. Worst-case scenario: They think Accelerate is a direction worth pursuing.