Bombs, Brits and Brad Pitt

This summer, "Team America: World Police" was remade as "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra." "G-Force" and "The Final Destination 3D" proved that people will watch anything if you allow them the privilege of paying three dollars extra. And the year's top-grossing movie forever associated Princeton with jive-talking robots.

But now for the good news: Pixar scored with the startlingly dark "Up"; "Star Trek" restored a light comic touch to the action blockbuster; "District 9" showed us that smart sci-fi can be made on a budget of peanuts; and the comic duo of Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms elevated dull concept to inspired comedy in "The Hangover." Three other films also managed to satisfy in the way that only cinema of the highest quality can. Here are the three best films of summer 2009.

3) In the Loop is a brutally potent satire about bumbling, deceitful government bureaucrats entangling the United States and Great Britain in a foreign war. The political satire here is razor-sharp, but frankly, it's not the real reason this film is so great: "In the Loop" is essentially a film about people who are very angry with each other, and writer/director Armando Iannucci has come up with a blistering and hilarious arsenal of insults for them to toss at each other. The rapid-fire, acidic wit ingrained in the screenplay is the reason to watch this film in the same way that Bruce Lee's martial-arts mastery is the reason to watch "Enter the Dragon" - it's just stand-alone impressive. The majority of these witty lines are unprintable, but some of the best involve horse genitalia, men in balaclavas and "The Sound of Music."

Of course, it takes a great cast to pull off writing like this, and ‘Loop' doesn't disappoint. The only big name in the cast, James Gandolfini, is terrific as an anti-war general, but the revelation is Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker, the adviser to an inept British official. In a film mostly consisting of speedy back and forth, Capaldi has the talent of knowing when to slow down the pace. When a subordinate screws up in one scene, Tucker stops and ruminates, as if considering a Zen riddle. Then he speaks: "The shinbone ... I'm going to tear out your shinbone." It's mean-spirited, it's vicious, and, like of the rest of the film, it's hysterical.

2) Sometimes, the best way to market a film is to lie through your teeth. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds was sold as an over-the-top version of "The Dirty Dozen": World War II a la "Death Proof." In fact, ‘Basterds' is as close to the art house as the top of the box office might ever get. It's a radically structured film, composed mostly of 15- to 20-minute conversations in French, German and English. Its only movie star, Brad Pitt, is basically supporting comic relief. It's audacious enough to ignore the history books completely while depicting a sensitive historical event.

And yet, the film is still a crowd-pleaser, because Tarantino is working at the height of his abilities. Those long conversations are as well-written as you might expect from Tarantino, but they're also surprisingly economical. Every sentence in the dazzling opening confrontation between a Nazi officer (Christoph Waltz) and a farmer harboring Jews is a thrust or parry in a way that only becomes clear much later, and seemingly extraneous facts in one conversation pay off as points of suspense later. Tarantino's knack with actors remains intact - Waltz' slimy mix of charm, opportunism and evil make for the best screen villain since the Joker - and indelible images abound, like a ghostly movie face projected over a cloud of smoke. Most encouragingly, Tarantino seems to be working with a new moral complexity. Some of the glee of "Kill Bill"-style righteous revenge is here, but there are dark echoes and disturbing analogies in the behavior of his heroes. There's a lot to be said about the morality of Tarantino's manipulation of history, but it's very hard to deny the strength of his filmmaking.

1) Like ‘Basterds,' Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is a strangely structured film. The tale of bomb disposal experts in 2003 Iraq consists of seven action sequences, separated only by very brief interludes. If this sounds like an adrenaline junkie's dream, it is, because Bigelow is incredibly skilled at building tension. Faced with the cinematic cliche of the ticking bomb, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have found ways to complicate and build on the scenario so that each sequence feels fresh and gripping. Bigelow also shows stunning visual mastery in building a sense of place, deftly switching between realistic handheld camerawork and a stylized image of Iraq as an alien wasteland.

What's really surprising about The Hurt Locker, though, is that it works as well as a character study as it does an action film. Our central character, Sgt. Will James (Jeremy Renner), initially seems like just another cliche, the loose cannon throwing caution to the wind. But as the film progresses, we see that he's a far more complex creation - a man who is damn good at his job, a born soldier and leader with a disdain for protocol, a desperate man addicted to the rush of life-threatening situations.

We gather this almost entirely by observing his actions - save for a quick sequence at the end, James and his fellow squad members talk about their feelings as much as you might expect from a bunch of macho army grunts (their typical bonding sessions involve vodka and punches to the stomach) "The Hurt Locker" would work pretty well as a silent film (though the brilliant sound design adds quite a lot), because it tells most of its story through movements, actions and pictures. Its base is pure cinema.