The Beyoncé Movies Ranked
Beyoncé is a woman of many talents. Revisiting her body of work in the cinematic medium, specifically that of the concert film, visual album, and “documentary,” I’m realizing one of those talents is in the creation of a nearly immaculate image. Beyoncé and her collaborators are powerful visual communicators, and through her directorial efforts especially, I’ve found an extravagance paired with an intended humility and ability to overcome adversity. To what extent those personal moments have affected me varies, but there’s a reason Queen Bey is the superstar she is, beyond the great music. I’ll get into that as I dig into the 11 film-shaped releases Beyoncé has directed or co-directed in the 13 years since 2010, excluding standalone music videos.
#11 — BEYONCÉ: YEAR OF 4 (2011)
Co-director: Ed Burke
4 (2011) is my favorite Beyoncé album, so anything that gives a look into the making of it is going to be at least marginally interesting to me. That being said, this is definitely marginal, as the short BEYONCÉ: YEAR OF 4 essentially translates to a promotional puff piece with a lot of the narration platitudes that bug me the most in Beyoncé’s filmography. With a greater focus on choreography of just one song (“Run the World [Girls]”), the film keeps just out of reach the kind of content I would like to see from something with its title. This might be a good time to mention that a number of Beyoncé’s movies are co-directed by Ed Burke, perhaps the mastermind behind the more technical camera movements (considering his work as cinematographer) while the performer is on stage and the like. Indeed, Beyoncé’s directorial credits are often qualified by a kind of supervisory context, which is not to diminish her input on key creative decisions. It’s just an acknowledgement of the star’s management and delegation of a lot of talent, a reading encouraged by the very text of her own films. In any event, YEAR OF 4 offers that in its most diminished state.
#10 — BEYONCÉ: LIFE IS BUT A DREAM (2013)
Co-director: Ed Burke
BEYONCÉ: LIFE IS BUT A DREAM picks up where YEAR OF 4 left off, as a chronicle of the performer/director’s previous couple years as she worked through her first pregnancy, recording of the album, and concert tour rehearsals. Like that previous short, LIFE IS BUT A DREAM feels a bit too calculated for my tastes, but also like YEAR OF 4, I am, on paper, interested in Beyoncé’s creative process. The fact that this is a feature-length HBO documentary means that there are a lot more opportunities for compelling nuggets of information or insights to come across. LIFE IS BUT A DREAM is a decent chronicle, but it also stands at a precipice of more investing visual storytelling from the director.
#9 — BEYONCÉ PRESENTS: MAKING THE GIFT (2019)
After starring in Disney’s hyper-realistic (and not good) THE LION KING remake (2019), Beyoncé put together an accompanying album entitled THE LION KING: THE GIFT (2019) to feature African music and its performers and beyond. The range of contributors doesn’t quite make it a “Beyoncé album” by my estimation, but THE GIFT is a pretty good and powerful album, which was translated visually into BLACK IS KING (more on that in a minute). Documenting the process in making the record, the 40-minute TV “feature” BEYONCÉ PRESENTS: MAKING THE GIFT is more substantive than the previous films on this list, even as it is a bit compromised as an ABC special connected to Disney’s mammoth marketing machine. That doesn’t mean MAKING THE GIFT is devoid of creative documentation of a major creative effort from across the globe. By this time Beyoncé had developed a trademark style of mixing in, to a standard wide-screen digital look, different aspect ratios stemming from handheld grainy digital and film formats. It cultivates a varied feel to her films and often affords different significance to the moments rendered in, what would be to many of the star’s younger fans, an anachronistic way. MAKING THE GIFT isn’t some major work, but if you like its titular album like I do, it’s worth a watch.
#8 — BEYONCÉ: LIVE IN ATLANTIC CITY (2013)
Co-director: Ed Burke
Beyoncé’s filmic 2013 feels a bit at odds with the music, images, and general tone presented in the December release of BEYONCÉ and its accompanying videos. That is especially true of BEYONCÉ: LIVE IN ATLANTIC CITY, a 2012 residency concert film that accompanied the home video release of LIFE IS BUT A DREAM. Performing in the wake of 4, and of course weaving in older hits, Beyoncé delivers a pretty impressive encapsulation of her live energy. But perhaps there is a case of diminishing returns in this earlier era of her directing career, as the maximalism of earlier concerts and more cohesive themes of later ones are not in full force in LIVE IN ATLANTIC CITY, which is still an entertaining watch.
#7 — BEYONCÉ: LIVE AT ROSELAND — ELEMENTS OF 4 (2011)
Co-directors: Ed Burke, Anthony Greene
BEYONCÉ: LIVE AT ROSELAND — ELEMENTS OF 4 has, for reasons already detailed, a lot in common with the other directorial works done shortly in the wake of 4 (the most documented era of her career, at least in her own films). The more “intimate” LIVE AT ROSELAND is a bit of a larger show for those who picture basement or even small theater shows and the like, but it certainly is a scaled down level for Beyoncé. And that totally works to her advantage as she traces her career so far, even pre-Destiny’s Child, through a powerful medley and a full performance of the songs on 4. LIVE AT ROSELAND is a welcome complement to the sheer energy of Beyoncé’s first directorial credit…
#6 — BEYONCÉ: I AM… WORLD TOUR (2010)
Co-director: Ed Burke
…BEYONCÉ: I AM… WORLD TOUR. This massive concert film, capturing pieces of over 100 shows, translates the scale of Beyoncé’s stardom and ambition with quick cuts, assembling the feeling of a seamless show compiled from numerous dates, complete with audience reaction and outfit changes. This kind of movie was not invented by Beyoncé, but the style on display here has come to define the recordings of her mammoth live act. I AM… WORLD TOUR is in line with later cinematic works in that it totally cultivates the image of Queen Bey, with audience members shrieking and watching with idolizing eyes. The film does capture the feeling of a live show in that I was totally overstimulated, which is not a bad thing in this case. This tour was in support of I AM… SASHA FIERCE (2008), and although it’s not my favorite album of Beyoncé’s, it is great and full of tunes rendered brilliantly in a live setting, complete with a full band given its due by the star in the moment. The interlacing of different media formats and video interludes are sometimes goofy (I’m reminded Beyoncé is a millennial), but it all makes for something that totally leaves a positive impact. There is something a bit less calculated in the construction of I AM… WORLD TOUR…perhaps it’s the reduced ubiquity of all-encompassing smart phones, although by 2010, of course there was still a lot of consumer documentation going on.
#5 — RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ (2023)
I am by now tired of Beyoncé’s ongoing claims to adversity. This is not meant to totally reduce her past or current difficulties as a Black woman, but to recognize the immense privilege she now holds in a world full of darkness (surely “eat the rich” must apply to billionaire husband Jay-Z, who I also love as an artist?). But at the end of the day, this person is a great creative and humanistic artist, and while I was reminded of the Roman bread and circuses watching the decadence of RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ, there’s no denying the director-star is a brilliant image-maker. Indeed, decadence was a key theme in the development of the RENAISSANCE album (2022) and its incredibly ambitious accompanying world tour, informed by Beyoncé’s Uncle Johnny. I would have loved to hear more on this angle, especially regarding the recording of the album, but of course this is a concert film, so there’s more of Beyoncé directing dancers and taking issue with some people who don’t understand or won’t accept her communication. The behind-the-scenes content of the director’s live recordings is a bit tired, but I keep having to walk back my criticisms (which, OK one more time, includes the insanely high ticket price for this “cinematic event”): RENAISSANCE is absolutely entertaining, coming at the end of the biggest gap between directorial efforts at just over three-and-a-half years. Just when I was lulled into the idea that maybe this series of performances doesn’t stack up to much of Beyoncé’s directorial efforts, a new guest appearance or incredible stage design was unveiled. RENAISSANCE ends up making the intended impression: that through cooperation and diverse collaboration, expansive, explosive, and mind-altering art can be created, even if it wasn’t as affecting for me as it was for many people.
#4 — HOMECOMING: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ (2019)
Co-director: Ed Burke
Beyoncé’s best concert film is the record of her appearance at Coachella 2018. HOMECOMING: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ is a wonderful channeling of a central HBCU theme and an ode to Black excellence, filtered through the performer’s incredible stage presence and numerous bangers. Once again, Beyoncé uses cutaways and behind-the-scenes interludes as opportunities to integrate different aspect ratios and camera media. This serves to truly transport from the stimulation of digital perfection to otherworldly spaces. The import of HOMECOMING’s visuals and themes make it the strongest narrative among the documentary and concert film approaches that have defined most of Beyoncé’s directorial work.
#3 — BEYONCÉ (2013)
As with her other visual albums, Beyoncé worked in a supervisor role that informed the whole project of her self-titled release, with segment directors, as it were, taking the reins for individual songs. With her first cohesive work in the medium, the director created a powerful sonic and visual pairing that, sure, would be topped by her later, but stood as her most brilliant cinematic vision yet. BEYONCÉ is full of bangers and clever, evocative images.
#2 — BLACK IS KING (2020)
Beyoncé became known for the hype-driven visual album, even though she didn’t invent the form, and her three best cinematic works fit into that mold. BLACK IS KING, the aforementioned Disney film based on THE LION KING: THE GIFT, itself sourced from (more like loosely inspired by) the titular 2019 remake, is a truly impactful interpretation of African folklore and, well, magic. Working as a supervisory force for the number of segment directors that make BLACK IS KING great, Beyoncé cultivates a simultaneously clear narrative and oblique, almost avant-garde challenge to legions of fans who are probably used to more straightforward storytelling. It helps the film immensely that the songs from THE GIFT, which are incredible on their own, are paired so imaginatively and powerfully with striking images so as to make the musical element as strong as, or maybe more than, the visual. I guess that is the dynamic at play for a truly great visual album. But as the title of this piece suggests, the delineation between documentary, concert film, and visual album shouldn’t reduce the truly cinematic work Beyoncé has been doing for more than a decade now. And BLACK IS KING is nearly the best example of that.
#1 — LEMONADE (2016)
LEMONADE was a moment. I remember when the album/visual album was released and the sheer mania that ensued, even greater than the self-titled release three years earlier. And it holds up, the reaction perhaps even more justified by the achievement of the film and its impact years removed. If I’ve sounded critical of Beyoncé’s narrative in her documentary movies, it’s because she is capable of much more deeply personal narratives that also have a universal appeal, funneled through remarkable visual language, as is the case with LEMONADE. Famously deconstructed for what it has to say about Jay-Z’s infidelity and the relationship management that followed, what I see and hear with the film is a woman facing a difficult decision, with the frustration, anger, and even euphoria that comes with that. As with BLACK IS KING, the music of LEMONADE is nearly inextricable from its images, but neither are hobbled by that. It is remarkable that two apparently disparate “products” could be devised and released to stand on their own. Because even if you mute LEMONADE, you are seeing so many brilliant scenes that are edited with a rhythm that, sure, speaks to the underlying music, but also acts as pure cinematic language. It is a musical and visual triumph, one that represented Beyoncé’s incredible artistic evolution up to that point. I’m hesitant to say that she’ll never top LEMONADE, even as it stands ahead of a number of her films released since, because I have a feeling that the Renaissance woman will develop in surprising directions yet.
