Boy in the band (Image via Amazon)

This has been a strange year for film, with few flicks spending so much as a week in a proper cinema. If you were wondering whether this exploding of the traditional rollout might lead to more arthouse films being just as strongly considered for year-end acclaim as Hollywood star vehicles, my own list wound up reflecting both.

Here, in reverse order, are my Top 20 films of 2020:

ABOVE: I guess this is what they mean by good light?

BELOW: Keep reading for tennis hos, a gay blue mayor in a red area, Laverne Cox and her friend attacked, why you should probably be tested for COVID-19 and more ...

Through a glass, darkly (Image via Netflix)

I wonder if any play has ever been adapted to film with better intentions than Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band (1968) was for Netflix by director Joe Mantello and über producer Ryan Murphy.

The chief creatives and the entire cast are gay and, as demonstrated in interviews since their take on the controversial classic became a Broadway smash in 2018 — as well as during a press-only Zoom Q&A two nights ago — possess clear-eyed appreciation for both the source material and its recently deceased author, with whom the men became close in the last years of his life.

And yet, while this newest Boys isn't exactly a stain on the play's legacy, it is a surprising and clear swing and miss.

A kiss before dying (Image via Zgreen/Outfest)

Make time to watch Ali LeRoi's The Obituary of Tunde Johnson at Outfest (it is viewable there through August 30) not only to support Outfest, to support independent film and to support LGBTQ film, but because it is likely to be one of the finest films you see all year.

Written by Stanley Kalu when he was a 19-year-old film student at USC, the film — about a gay Nigerian-American high school student killed by white police — could not be more of the moment, yet it was finished over a year ago, proving that its theme of pervasive racial inequality in the U.S. is sadly evergreen.

A former queen cried when she saw this pic — and you will, too ... (Image via Outfest)

Available for viewing on the Outfest site (the subscription is worth it) is the new drag doc P.S. Burn This Letter Please, a revelatory look at drag in NYC in the '50s and '60s, informed by the discovery of a cache of letters from the period.

Nice A (Image by Blake Yelavich for Walking Jack)

ABOVE: That's the Walking Jack Letters Brief on this model, shot by Blake Yelavich.

BELOW: Keep reading for Cotton picking a fight, Cruz hates hard workers, Trump's star-dudded convention, creeptastic thriller The Rental and more ...

A review of Passing Strangers — the 1974 Arthur J. Bressan erotic film that's streaming now on PinkLabel.tv — written by Gary Needham ...

Mart Crowley: August 21, 1935-March 8, 2020 (Image via video still)

Mart Crowley, who changed American theater with his trailblazing — and just plain blazing — gay-themed play The Boys in the Band (1968), died Sunday. He was 84.

Crowley's death was first reported by writer Michael Musto. He reportedly suffered a heart attack, had surgery, but passed away while recovering from surgery.