Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight hit a grand slam with everyone who attended Monday night’s Princess of Wales’ screening — hearty cheers, whoo-whoos, crowd on its feet. You could feel the love all over. And then McCarthy and the brilliant ensemble cast — Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy, John Slattery and Liev Schreiber — came on-stage with the real-life, real-deal Boston Globe guys they play in the film — ‘Spotlight’ editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Keaton), Globe reporters Michael Rezendes (Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), Matt Carroll (d’Arcy), former managing editor Ben Bradlee, Jr. (Slattery) and former Globe editor Marty Baron (Schreiber).

And then Ruffalo delivered an impromptu “thank you, hats off” speech to the real-deal guys (above), and everyone was just delighted and laughing and applauding. A total bliss-out.

Spotlight (Open Road, 11.6) is a drop-dead guaranteed hit. Even, I predict, with the dumb-asses who prefer escapist CG slop to smart movies. Every sector of the audience is going to be won over because it makes you feel good and proud all over. This is one brilliant film about tenacious good-guy journalists accomplishing a truly heroic and compassionate thing in a thorough, uber-professional way — what’s not to applaud? Best Picture-wise Spotlight is the movie to beat right now.  That’s not to say that some film won’t come along and kick its ass, but no other contender I’ve seen this year delivers quite as fully.  

(l. to r.) Walter “Robby” Robinson, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll, Brian d’Arcy, Tom McCarthy.

(l. to r.) Baron, Slattery, Bradlee, Rezendes, Ruffalo, Robinson, Keaton, McAdams, Pfeiffer, Carroll, d’Arcy, McCarthy.

(l. to r.) Marty Baron, John Slattery, Ben Bradlee, Jr., Michael Rezendes, Mark Ruffalo.

With Get It While You Can still stalled in lawsuit hell, Amy Berg‘s Janis: Little Girl Blue is the only Joplin project around. In his Venice Film Festival review, David Rooney called it “essential viewing for ’60s counterculture junkies”…what else? Excerpt: “Berg enlists Chan Marshall as narrator, chiefly to read excerpts from Joplin’s letters, either to her family at home in Port Arthur, Texas, or to friends and lovers. This turns out to be a smart choice. Marshall doesn’t ‘act’ her readings but — with her gentle Southern accent and self-evident connection to the subject as a female performer — simply lets the words and sentiments speak for themselves.

Yesterday afternoon I was thanking God Almighty and the forces of chance for allowing me to savor each and every line of dialogue in James Vanderbilt‘s Truth. That’s because I was watching it in an aurally exquisite Scotiabank theatre instead of the dreaded Princess of Wales, which is mostly an echo-phonic, bass-thromp nightmare. I’ll be catching my second viewing of Spotlight there tonight, and my heart is already breaking over the dialogue that I won’t hear as clearly as I did in Telluride because of that godawful echo-chamber effect that I hate with a passion. The Toronto Film Festival leases the Princess of Wales from Mirvish Productions, a Toronto-based stage-show operation. The business was launched by the late “Honest Ed” Mirvish and is run today by his son, David. HE to Mirvish, Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling: please improve the sound at this godawful facility. I saw The Danish Girl there the other day, and I was only able to decipher about half of the dialogue. It was dead fucking awful. Do yourselves and festivalgoers a favor and ask Boston Light & Sound’s Chapin Cutler to fix things. Every time I’m about to see a film at the Princess of Wales I sink into a mood pocket…please. Respect the movies, respect the sound. “Good enough” isn’t good enough.