The innovative documentary filmmaker Errol Morris made two off-beat, critically-acclaimed studies (1978's "Gates of Heaven", about pet cemeteries, and 1981's "Vernon, Florida", about small-town American eccentrics) before achieving his breakthrough with the feature-length "The Thin Blue Line" (1988). The film was an unsettling investigation into the case of Randall Adams, a Texas man who claimed he had been wrongfully convicted of murder. It mixed oddly deadpan interviews, stylized recreations of conflicting accounts of the crime and alienating close-ups of documents and objects both
