Fruitvale Station is a series of vignettes searching in vain for connective tissue. Its anchor is the excellent young actor Michael B. Jordan, and while he and the other performers in this dramatization of a harrowing recent tragedy are all solid, the final product is still a bit too scattered to make an impact, despite the moment-to-moment resonance.
Death does not negotiate. When it arrives at one’s door, there is no escape. Disease, fatal accidents, murder, suicide, death cares little for the means, only the end, literally. The discussion of death becomes all the more morbid when people engage in ideas of who deserves to die and who deserves to live.
The summer season has, over the past few decades, become synonymous with movie blockbuster season, as studios have found the months of May to August to contain the most profitable release dates for big-budget tentpole features, leading to the summer of recent years being filled with superhero films, big budget CGI features, and other tentpole …