Sundance. Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.

"My favorite film of the festival so far, beyond a doubt," declares Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "[Julien] Temple's film is much more than a biopic of the late Clash frontman, and still less a hagiography. Like the director's outstanding Sex Pistols doc The Filth and the Fury, it's a portrait of the peculiar convulsions of British society in the late 1970s and the exciting and often self-destructive pop culture it produced. Joe Strummer has all the energy, passion and high style of Temple's many music videos, but the sheer complexity of the subject makes it his best film by a fair stretch."

"Strummer's strange career, from his sudden burst onto the punk rock scene of the mid-70s with the Clash to his post-Clash burnout, exile and gradual re-emergence, provides Temple with unusually dramatic and complex elements to explore a brilliant if mercurial, creative musical life," writes Robert Koehler in Variety.

Jeremy Mathews for Film Threat: "Temple succeeds in creating a portrait neither glowing nor damning, but representative of a remarkable man."

Update, 1/26: "Temple's friendship with Strummer serves as a bit of a double-edged sword." Kevin Kelly explains at Cinematical.

Update, 1/30: Beth Gilligan at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "[T]he critique of British life in the mid-to-late 20th century ultimately takes a backseat to an affectionate, all-encompassing portrait of a middle-class boy once known as John Mellor."

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 22, 2007 2:33 PM