"Hale County" feels like less like a movie that was made than a dream that has welled up in the subconscious of a nation unwilling to see it, rendered so beautiful that it's impossible to look away.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 9, 2024

I respect Ross’s ambition and general project more than a brainwave readout of moment-to-moment reactions would indicate.

| Jan 6, 2023

Hale County illustrates the sad truth of just how much of America, especially but not only the rural South, is still almost entirely segregated.

| Jun 1, 2020

RaMell Ross's remarkable debut feature is as much an experimental film as it is a documentary, and it succeeds smashingly on both fronts.

| Mar 25, 2020

An intriguing and artistically-styled documentary that is mostly deserving of the critical praise.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 6, 2020

...a transcendental and immersive documentary assembled by RaMell Ross...

| Oct 30, 2019

It's not for everyone, but if you give it a chance, it's possible you might end up with, at least, an image or moment engraved in your brain. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2019

An essential and utterly fascinating look at what it means to be black, to be American, and ultimately to be human.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 3, 2019

Ross' film is merely an artistic glimpse of a life, and a community, that most of us will never see firsthand, but a life put in a perspective that we can all understand: sometimes joyous, sometimes mundane and sometimes utterly, utterly sad.

| Mar 1, 2019

Ross has his own peculiar, attentive approach.

| Feb 27, 2019

This is an achingly specific picture of mundane moments and sudden sorrows, with long, patient scenes of young men shooting hoops or playing blues guitar, of a toddler tiring himself out, of kids just doing stuff in backyards and fields.

| Feb 22, 2019

At the same time that Hale County's collage style helps the film avoid becoming a Southern variation on Hoop Dreams, it refuses to lapse into anything resembling hand-wringing melancholy.

| Feb 21, 2019

A visually mesmerizing but only half-illuminating documentary on black lives in the Deep South.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 12, 2019

The result is impressionistic, a look at daily triumphs and challenges that feels like reverie but couldn't be more real.

| Feb 1, 2019

Hale County This Morning, This Evening has an impressive pedigree but that wouldn't count for much if it didn't achieve its aim to find a new language for the overlooked parts of neglected lives. But it does -- lovingly.

| Jan 26, 2019

Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a captivating film that forces us to reflect on the representation of blackness in a whole new light.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 25, 2019

Much of the imagery is exquisite.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 23, 2019

A lyrical meditation on the Black Belt experience, and the parameters of representing it...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 20, 2019

There are moments of genuine lyricism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 19, 2019

A work of visual poetry, emotional and impressionistic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 18, 2019