Summer 2006 was a three-month onslaught of obscene gas prices, stifling heat and disastrous overseas conflict.In other words, it was prime time to duck into a dark, air-conditioned room, spend a couple hours with a bunch of strangers and forget about politics and petroleum. But in case you were too busy facing the music and the heat, here are some summer movie highlights:Funniest Movie: Strangers With Candy. Amy Sedaris and her ex-junkie-prostitute alter ego Jerri Blank made a nearly flawless leap to the big screen in a prequel to the brilliant-but-cancelled Comedy Central show. Most Pleasant Surprise: The Descent. Horror movies with no-name casts are being churned out by the week, but this British import is among the scariest films ever made.Most Unfairly Panned: Lady in the Water. I hated M. Night Shyamalan's The Village as much as the next person, but his twisted fairy tale, though flawed, was an intriguing ' at times moving ' tribute to how ideas and storytelling are society's foundation.Best Performance: Meryl Streep, A Prairie Home Companion. While Streep made The Devil Wears Prada less of a snoozer, her real summer triumph was in playing a neurotic, lovelorn folk singer in Robert Altman's masterpiece. Biggest Scene-Stealer: Sacha Baron Cohen, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Will Ferrell passed the scene-stealer torch to Cohen, who played a gay, Perrier-swigging French race car driver who catches up on his Camus on the track.Biggest Letdown: Miami Vice. Michael Mann can still make a beaut of an action scene, but he also threw in an expressionless Colin Farrell and one of the most ridiculous romances in recent years.Worst Movie: Down in the Valley. This idiotic, overlong Taxi Driver mish-mash might be a lower career point for Edward Norton than the time he spent nancing around in a purple costume in Death to Smoochy.Best Movie: A Prairie Home Companion. The two most deliriously wonderful hours of the movies this summer ' and, incidentally, the best so far this year ' were Robert Altman's Companion
a hoot-hollering celebration of life, disguised as a morbid meditation on death, disguised as an old-time radio show. If there's any justice in the world, Companion and its cast are Oscar-bound. 17
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Matt Burns
