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97%
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 63
Fresh: 56 | Rotten: 7
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.
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Critic Reviews: 22
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 0
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.
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Filmmaker Julien Temple takes a look beyond the guise of the late, anti-establishment icon Joe Strummer to offer a warm portrait of the self-described "mouthy little git" who was born John Mellor and was destined to become the frontman for one of the most influential punk bands ever. A complex figure who would learn to use his gift for music as a means of decompressing his conscience, Strummer is revealed here through unearthed interviews and the illuminating recollections of his closest
Nov 2, 2007 Limited
Jul 8, 2008
$0.1M
IFC First Take
All Critics (63) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (56) | Rotten (7) | DVD (1)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Temple has plenty of cinematic tricks and willing interview subjects.
Compelling viewing, even for people who don't care a bit for the punk scene.
Lively doc on the late Brit punk rocker guitarist for the Clash.
This offers Strummer fans unlimited access to the man behind the legend. Though it really is for fans - who should run and buy it.
The big unanswerable question is: Do we wish Strummer would have listened to David Lee Roth's advice that "You don't have to take life so seriously, honey"?
[Director Julien Temple] stops short of hagiography, while exhaustively positing Strummer as one of the most important cultural figures of the 20th century.
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.
The film is the work of an admirer, but not an uncritical one.
Temple's film is a fittingly conscientious and absorbing tribute to his complex, contradictory personality.
One of the most compelling documentary portraits of a musician yet made.
For as much as I love Joe Strummer, for as much as I love The Clash and for as informative as I found Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, this documentary was a pretentious pile of shit about a seemingly unpretentious man. The archive and interviews with Strummer and people who worked with and I don't know, actually
November 12, 2007Super Reviewer
Unflinching documentary of one of the most important figures in the history of popular music. I found it a little hard to watch for a borderline obsessive Clash fan like myself, as the focus was not just on the magic in a bottle that the band found, but rather on Joe, front to back... meaning that there was a lot more
January 28, 2008Super Reviewer
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Pictures: Wes Anderson films
Video: Your friendly four minute preview
Trailer: The legend continues!
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