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.