Screenings for Mala Noche start today and run through Thursday, June 21. Showtimes are available on the Brattle's website.

Like Killer of Sheep, another little-seen classic that was buried in DVD limbo, Gus Van Sant's first feature, 1985's Mala Noche is finally getting some love while on tour.

Getting some love is, as a matter of fact, the subject of Mala Noche, and the plot, based on the Walt Curtis novel, follows a clerk (Tim Streeter) who falls in love with a young Mexican man. But plot isn't exactly the point - Van Sant is more interested in detailing the lives of an outcast group.

A Washington Post critic describes Van Sant's mission perfectly: "Partly the film is fueled by Van Sant's romanticism of losers; it's fascinated by the poetic allure of poor beautiful boys riding the rail into the promised land and ending up dead, crumpled on the pavement in the middle of a street, thousands of miles from home."

Even though Van Sant's movies are so varied, these "romantic losers" keep turning up in his work, either at the very center ("My Own Private Idaho," "Good Will Hunting") or at the margins ("To Die For"). Well, the Psycho remake was a notable exception, but that's what you get when you remake a classic frame for frame.