How you know a movie is really, really good

• The audience doesn't talk through it;

• Almost no one gets up to go to the bathroom;

• No one walks out;

• Everyone applauds at the end.

These should be obvious, I suppose, but these things rarely happen all at once. But it happened twice this weekend for me, first at the AMC 30 South Barrington, and again at the Century Theater in Evanston. Both times, the movie in question was Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."

I expected the worst Thursday night while I was waiting for the midnight show at South Barrington to begin. The crowd mostly contained people younger than me, and I've already arrived at that ripe old age (30) where I assume you young whipper-snappers are up to no good. The advance reviews for "Basterds" informed me the film was comprised of very long scenes of dialogue spoken in languages other than English, and I figured that was a recipe for fidgeting, chattering disaster.

But I was happy to be proven wrong. Apparently, audiences know what to expect from Tarantino, and embrace it.

For me, the film is clearly the best I've seen all year, although I have not yet seen "Moon" or "The Hurt Locker." It can work on so many levels: fairy tale, revenge fantasy, social critique, dark comedy, a movie about movies, a movie about moviegoers, and as both a celebration and condemnation of war.

The most fascinating thing "Basterds" does is criticize its own audience. We take sick pleasure in watching Brad Pitt's basterds commit atrocities against the Nazis, but then recoil when we see Hitler and Goebbels laughing while Fredrick Zoller takes down American soldiers with his sniper rifle. We want to cheer when Lt. Aldo Raine makes his "masterpiece" in the final scene, just as the Nazi filmgoers cheer when Zoller carves a swastika into the floorboards of his sniper's nest.

They say history is written by the victors, but Tarantino suggests it's written by the propagandists -- and passages of "Inglourious Basterds" could also be seen as mock-propaganda themselves. It's Tarantino's most ambitious film, and it might be his best, though I'm not quite ready to wrestle that title away from "Pulp Fiction."

That a film this audacious could gross $38 million in its opening weekend in a year that made hits out of "Transformers: ROTF" and "G.I. Joe" is very encouraging. I expect the word of mouth will be very good, so perhaps this will have legs for weeks to come. Given the Hollywood intelligentsia's reaction to the film, I'm not so sure about its Oscar prospects -- although Christoph Waltz, who plays the fascinating Col. Hans Landa, is a lock for a best-supporting actor nod. Nevermind the fact that he's really the lead actor in the film.

But I don't think Tarantino needs an Oscar. He did need a hit, and "Inglourious Basterds" somehow has become one, an instant cult classic. Something tells me a lot of college dorm rooms will have a poster of Lt. Aldo Raine on their walls, right next to Jack Torrance, Tony Montana and Tyler Durden.