Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé

Homecoming is directed and performed with exacting precision, but it’s freewheeling too, its star favoring spliced and inventive arrangements of her hits, the totality of which make the film feel more like a pinnacle than a pilgrimage.

The behind-the-scenes access to “Homecoming” is important. ... However, those scenes interrupt the momentum building in the powerful concert.

Homecoming is an incredible concert film, but it’s also a testament to the totality of Beyoncé’s vision, the fact that she gave us a groundbreaking performance and then, a year later, showed us how to watch it. The real beauty of Homecoming isn’t the performance footage or the flashes of Beyoncé’s inner life; it’s the latest opportunity to see her mind at work.

The Homecoming movie’s combo of well-edited stage spectacle and behind-the-scenes segments—intimate, hard-fought, occasionally tense, politically explicit, personally specific segments—make it a career-defining document.

“Homecoming” crackles and pops with music to make the soul soar. “Homecoming” resonates as a vibrant history lesson and a celebration of dance and instrumental and vocal artistry. “Homecoming” is epic and yet intimate, sweet and yet sexy, defiant and yet inclusive, gritty and yet magical. “Homecoming” is one of the best concert films ever made.

If you have a Netflix password and two more hours to spare, you’re in for one of the greatest concert films ever made.

It should be said—not unkindly—that there is never a waning doubt that this is Beyoncé’s film. This is not an inherently negative thing, but a fair indication that we as an audience are only going to be granted so much access to her bubble of privacy.

If “Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” were nothing more than an opportunity to relive Beychella with flawless high-def sound and video, it would still be a major public service. ... As the show goes on, however, [the behind-the-scenes interludes] start to feel more crucial.

The full thing on Netflix, framed as the fruit of artistic striving, may come close to achieving its epic ambitions, but it’s too soon to tell—the verdict won’t be in until a whole generation of children, homeschooling themselves on its choreography, have come of age.

Homecoming will probably go down as one of the best concert films of all time ... Ultimately, Homecoming feels akin to those filmed Broadway musicals that air on PBS for plebs like me. It's a joyous ride, but a facsimile of the experience.

On a pure documentary level, there’s not much new news here. ... Rewatching it on film a year later, “high water mark in 21st century entertainment” actually almost feels like it’s underselling it, just a tad. It starts off with the best high-concept Grammy night mega-setpiece you’ve never seen--a high-concept “Crazy in Love” that replaces the sampled horns with, like, every college horn player in the country--and then just keeps ratcheting that intensity up and down, production number after freshly invigorating production number, until you cry uncle... or mommy.

It’s far more action than necessary for anyone just wanting to watch the concert, but it’s a revelatory — and celebratory — look at the boldest statement she’s made yet.