Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (2007)
88 %
Reviews Counted: 56 Fresh: 49 Rotten:7 Average Rating: 7.3/10
Consensus:
Displaying Joe Strummer warts and all, The Future is Unwritten succeeds as both an engrossing documentary and a comprehensive examination of one of music's most legendary figures.
Runtime: 2 hrs 4 mins
Theatrical Release: Nov 2, 2007 Limited
Box Office: $149,416
Synopsis: Filmmaker Julien Temple has spent much of his career documenting the music scene in England, including such seminal works as THE GREAT ROCK AND ROLL SWINDLE and THE FILTH AND THE FURY about the Sex Pistols. In 1976 he had originally set out to do a film about a different British punk band, the... [More]
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Starring: Flea, Bono, Martin Scorsese, Steve Buscemi, Matt Dillon
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
Julien Temple's film is an energizing work of art, a visually striking and inspiring look at a band that never 'sold out' and the leader who saw to it that they didn't.
Comment
06/20/08
Miracle of miracles, a valuable portrait of Strummer manages to emerge from the chaos, helped by the film's one consistent thread: tapes of a BBC World Service radio show he hosted in his final years.
02/01/08
Top Critic
[Director Julien Temple] stops short of hagiography, while exhaustively positing Strummer as one of the most important cultural figures of the 20th century.
02/01/08
Temple, who chronicled the Sex Pistols...offers the full, sometimes bloated, context of Strummer's life through the testimony of his many friends and collaborators.
02/01/08
Top Critic
Temple gets at the heart of Strummer's character, at the unbridled joy that existed within his righteous anger, the satisfaction of knowing he was on the right side of history and hadn't had to sell any part of himself to get there.
01/18/08
Temple's film is a fittingly conscientious and absorbing tribute to his complex, contradictory personality.
01/09/08
A beautiful, evocative collage composed of concert footage, photographs, interviews and film clips, as well as interviews with people who knew him, the film is a rigorously thorough biography and an impassioned accolade.
01/04/08
Top Critic
Temple has plenty of cinematic tricks and willing interview subjects.
01/04/08
Top Critic
Compelling viewing, even for people who don't care a bit for the punk scene.
01/04/08
Top Critic
One of the most compelling documentary portraits of a musician yet made.
01/04/08
Future is overlong and will best be enjoyed and understood by fans, but even newcomers will appreciate the essential drive of the man, who died of a sudden heart attack in 2002, and admire his ability to balance anger and ecstasy.
12/14/07
Top Critic
The story illustrates how easily political art can be hijacked by the other side, and it illuminates the anguish of a man who spent the last 20 years of his life wrestling with his legacy.
12/14/07
Top Critic
By the end of Temple’s rather long film, that is the person who emerges: a man no longer interested in changing the universe song by song but devoted to enriching his own corner of the world.
12/07/07
Indulgent celebrity interviews..., repetitive details from Strummer's friends, and rapid-fire editing of found footage that sometimes matches the music but often just clouds the narrative.
11/21/07
The end result is a documentary that feels very insider and exclusive... it's probably best suited to those who are already fans.
11/17/07
A remarkably well-detailed doc that proves 'Rock The Casbah' is not just that song from the cell phone commercials.
11/09/07
Temple's film offers a rich, detailed portrait of a commanding but idealistic Strummer against the backdrop of the do-it-yourself punk ethos of the late '70s.
11/09/07
Related Forums
(2007 release/Docu)-JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN opens in NYC & LA on Nov. 2
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