No Future? Not Exactly.  Joe Strummer transcends the idea of
punk, and the music lives on  Punk died, the Silver Jews sang,
the first time a kid shouted "Punk's not dead!" The words are
never uttered in Julien Temple's Joe Strummer: The Future Is
Unwritten, and maybe that's why you come away from this epic doc
feeling hopeful about the health of punk's lingering ideals.
Piecing together snippets of everything from Raging Bull to an
animated Animal Farm, along with archival scraps, performance
clips, and a mosaic of witness testimonies, Temple's engrossing
portrait of the Clash's late frontman uses endlessly suggestive
montage to show how he kept punk's precepts alive, even after he
left the music and eventually the earth itself.  Was there ever
any question about Strummer's cred? Yes, children, depressing as
it is to say, people have been arguing what is or isn't or
wasn't or shouldn't be punk since Green Day was in Romper Room.
The '70s start, and suddenly you're not the only one who wears
rip-kneed jeans, l