Hey guys, it's National Donut Day! I know, I know, calm down. After you're done raiding every Winchell's in the tri-county area, why not digest in the non-judgmental comfort of your local movie theater? This weekend's picks range from the highbrow (Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff) to the angsty (Richard Ayoade's Submarine) to the teenaged and mutant (X-Men: First Class).

5. Karina Longworth sat down with Mike Mills to discuss his latest, Beginners, an autobiographical tale about Mills' relationship with his deceased father. “People have been saying that word 'cathartic' a lot…. And I don't believe in that at all…It was a way to keep this conversation going with my dad,” Mills says. In his review, Rob Nelson praises the film as “the story of an artist who, in his own way, has only begun to come out.”

4. Nick Pinkerton takes a look at Submarine, a deadpan tale of young love narrated by 15-year-old Oliver Tate. “Reiterated throughout is the idea of Oliver as self-conscious director of his own young love and heartbreak,” Pinkerton writes. This week, Eric Hynes caught up with British actor-turned-director Richard Ayoade to chat about his journey from sitcom star to aspiring auteur.

3. Pinkerton takes in Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, a documentary on the life and work of the legendary cinematographer. He calls the film, which took 17 years to make, “a soapbox for the wizened eminence to explain the innovative effects he achieved with a Technicolor camera the size of a sedan while narrating his epoch-spanning career.”

2. Longworth calls X-Men: First Class “dumbass, single-trick revisionist history.” The long-awaited prequel to 2000's X-Men, she tells us, “only serves to remind how stylish and witty the first installment was a decade ago.”

1. Phil Coldiron investigates Nina Menkes' “bluntly effective psychological realism” in his review of Dissolution, on offer at the Downtown Independent until June 7.

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