Dear Lemon Lima takes an offbeat yet compassionate look at heartbreak and identity discovery at the onset of teenagehood.

When filmmakers turn to the work of, say, H.G. Wells or Daphne du Maurier as source material, it doesn’t guarantee that their stories will produce exciting, compelling films, but when your inspiration is Hasbro, are you really giving yourself a chance?

The 13^th annual City of Lights, City of Angels (COL•COA) film festival, a weeklong showcase for new French films, is underway in Los Angeles this week.

In this 2006 video documentary, which has been making the rounds in art houses this year, director Bertrand Normand spotlights five Russian ballerinas at various stages in their careers at the Kirov Ballet.

If you can survive the disconcerting first 11 minutes of Joe Swanberg’s fifth feature, then you’ll be rewarded with an intriguing look at how artists struggle to sustain committed relationships, which are complicated by disciplines that allow performers to share intimate experiences with various collaborators.

Bart Got a Room, written and directed by Brian Hecker, is a cautionary tale about high expectations.

Inspired by a set of songs composed by contemporary songwriters Frank Thomas (lyrics) and Reinhardt Wagner (music), Paris 36 is a knowingly old-fashioned French film directed by Christophe Barratier, whose previous effort, The Choir (2004), received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

The 2008 Jury Prize winner in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, Tokyo Sonata is a departure for Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who is perhaps best known in the States for his creepy horror films Cure and Pulse.

Max Solomon (Spencer Berger) is such a poor writer that a performance of his play “The Onion Dance” hospitalizes his grandfather.