DAKOTA BOLDLY GOES.........WHY "PLEASE STAND BY" DIDN'T MAKE ME HURL......

Please Stand By (2017)    By now, BQ visitors know the love-hate relationship I have with independent film.......

                Okay, honestly, it seems like it tilts to the 'hate' side more often than not......

                But I plead innocent........it's not my fault indies attract the worst of the cinema community.........self-indulgent babies who wrap themselves in a false aura of artistry because they maxed out their mom's credit card to shoot a movie on their cellphone.........

                  That's why you have film festivals clogged to capacity with unwatchable sludge about angst-ridden millennials  returning to their dysfunctional home towns.......blecccchhhhhhhhhhh......

                    Stop the presses!  (That is, if there were any presses left....) Here's one indie I couldn't help but hug 'n love......

                  How could anyone resist this.........Dakota Fanning applying her A-game to playing a severely autistic girl who's a rabid Trekkie.......and writer of a 400 plus page fanfiction screenplay....

                   Fanning's painful realistic portrayal of her character's affliction breaks your heart every step of the way........as the film's story sends her on a unsupervised odyssey from San Francisco to Los Angeles to enter her script in a Paramount Studios contest for the Trek-o-holics......

                   Naturally, you could predict all the travelogue episodes in which Fanning encounters equal measures of compassion and cruelty.........but that didn't make them any less compelling.......including a wonderfully surprising moment when she's confronted by gentle, sympathetic beat cop (Patton Oswalt)........

                   That's all the description you'll get here.......BQ says put it on your 'to view' list right away.....4 stars (****)  there now, I just tilted the whole 'love-hate-indie' thing over to the 'love side....