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.

Metrograph is doing what it does best, yet again: Offering a perfect venue at which to see a vintage film you've maybe never gotten around to seeing, but feel you maybe should.

This time, it's New York, New York's turn, a new 35mm print of which (all 155 minutes) might be at the top of your heap of things to do in NYC in the near future.

The 1977 film, directed by Martin Scorsese, is one of his most peculiar.

(Image via Breaking Glass)

Last week, I made time to see not one but two NYC-oriented films, each offering unique portraits of the city, and unique storytelling that left me struggling to think of comparables. For that reason alone — I always give points to the nonformulaic —you should try to see Cubby, the debut feature by Mark Blane, and Downtown 81, a fairy-tale-like feature shot in 1980-1981 and recently restored for release by Metrograph Pictures.