While Michael Moore could be considered the reigning king of mainstream documentaries, the true auteur in the mind of most critics is longtime filmmaker Errol Morris. As with his previous pictures, his latest, “Tabloid,” is yet another stroke of genius. Morris, no stranger to stylized filmmaking, has once again created one hell of an intriguing and exhilarating piece of cinema.

In 2003, Morris won the Academy Award for his film “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.” His next film, “Standard Operating Procedure,” about the photographs and alleged torture at the Abu Ghraib prison, garnered rave reviews from film critics across the board and made a plethora of top-ten lists in 2008. Now three years later, Morris returns again with a deeply engrossing film.

The film follows the sordid story of former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney, who made her mark as a tabloid staple in the late ’70s. For the onetime beauty queen with an IQ of 168, her devotion to the man of her dreams leads her across the globe, into jail and onto the front pages of Britain’s infamous tabloids.

In 1977, McKinney was accused of abducting and sexually assaulting a young Mormon man named Kirk Anderson, in a case that was later dubbed the Mormon Sex in Chains case. The story became one of immense interest to British tabloid newspapers, which reported and examined the stories relentlessly for months.

The story follows McKinney through a surreal world of kidnapping, borderline-cultish religious ways, risqué photography, magical underwear and celestial sex, culminating in a cloning laboratory in South Korea. Was she guilty of kidnapping and raping the man she claimed to love — or could it be that she was helping him escape from the crazed and oppressed religious sect he was born and raised to endure, regardless of the dark future that lay ahead? Was McKinney telling the truth or was it all just one big long lie?

Morris introduces the British tabloid sensation in such a fashion that by the film’s end you still have no idea who is telling the truth. McKinney tells one story while those behind the tabloids’ front pages remember otherwise. The great thing about Morris and his films is its utter lack of moralizing: It doesn’t matter who is right or wrong, but instead what makes a delightfully strange story. What begins as weird continues to become more intriguingly odd as the film progresses, making the film truly one of a kind.

IFC Films subdivision Sundance Selects, which most recently released a handful of other entertaining documentaries such as Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” and Cindy Meehl’s “Buck,” really seems to know a great doc when they see one. They’ve wisely picked up the rights to this unique film, which should be seen by anyone calling themselves fans of compelling storytelling.

“Tabloid” is currently playing at Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights.

Other Articles You Might Like: