‘Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé’ Review: Concert Doc Highlights the Pursuit of Perfection, With Dazzling Results

variety.com:

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer The impression of flawlessness is a tough standard to maintain. It’s what audiences have come to expect of Beyoncé since she debuted as one-fourth of Destiny’s Child in 1997, not merely because of her era-defining music and performances but because she executes it with such seeming ease.

Surprise plays a role: It’s part of the reason why her unprecedented 2013 surprise-drop, self-titled album rewrote the release strategy playbook for the music industry, and why her elaborate headlining slot at Coachella in 2018 was instantly historic.

She’s the bar, and has been for the past decade — and she’s raised it time and again. 2022’s “Renaissance,” an album centered in the Black experience drawing heavily from, and indebted to, ballroom and queer culture, came with a more traditional rollout — “Break My Soul,” a diva house whiff of ’90s revivalism, wasn’t exactly the expected direction — and although it was more polarizing than her other recent work, it connected in a way that many of her albums hadn’t, creating a sense of community among her diehard fans while drawing more casual listeners into its saucy, freewheeling gravitational pull. “It’s always been about using my art and my influence to really celebrate all of our differences,” she says during a voiceover vignette in “Renassaince: A Film,” her concert movie that weaves a breathless amount of footage from various dates on her record-setting Renaissance World Tour. “My ultimate goal is to create a space where everyone is free and no one is judged, and everyone can be their childlike selves, their sexiest selves.