After seven hours in the St. Louis airport, I have returned from my long, wonderful weekend at the True/False Film Festival. Below, you’ll find a recap of the films I covered whilst in Columbia, MO. But first, I want to give a shout-out to Satin and Chenille.

Before each screening at True/False, “buskers” culled from all over the country take the stage to perform while the audience is filing in. At some of the larger True/False venues, the buskers sort of fade into the background, but at an intimate space like the new Little Ragtag, the performers really get a chance to take over the room. That’s where I saw Satin and Chenille, a girl and boy (I came late, so I’m not sure which one is Satin and which one is Chenille) who did a tongue-in-cheek set of standards and love songs before the Friday night screening of Carny.

“I hope you guys love each other as much as we love love songs,” said the boy, before they launched into an acoustic guitar-fueled version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” They followed that up with an epic, partially-accapella version on “I’ve Had The Time of My Life,” which turned into a mass sing-a-long. It was a great moment, and maybe an audience of 50 or so moviegoers united by a Dirty Dancing reference is a little thing compared to the achievement of such a well-curated program of films, but it’s also one of the many things that sets True/False apart from larger, more impersonal festivals, and it’s definitely a reason to go back next year.

Anyway. Check out a guide to my True/False reviews after the jump.

…an Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist: “Part self-help exercise in the form of performance art, part semi-serious academic study of post-collegiate depression, part fully-serious, full-on personal purge, Wrist is tonally schizophrenic in a way that, in a previous generation, only a first feature could be. But based on how the crowd reacted last night, I have to wonder if such whiplash-inducing address is becoming a dominant popular culture style.”

Shake the Devil Off: “It’s maybe the only truly post-Katrina film on the festival circuit, in that it’s not really at all concerned with the storm itself, but with the social, economic and racial ripple effects of Katrina that really only became apparent in the months thereafter.”

Forbidden Lies:  “[Director Anna] Broinowski’s fabrications hardly undermine the film’s integrity––in fact, it’s through the melding of form and content that Broinowski both delivers her most potent commentary on the Khouri clusterfuck, and provides the film with some of its most crowd-pleasing moments.”

Gonzo: “Through repeatedly paralleling then to now, Vietnam to Iraq, Bush to Nixon, Gibney makes the case that what the world needs now is not necessarily a “change candidate” like Obama, but a journalist of Thompson’s stripe: unpredictable, beholden to no one, and absolutely unafraid to show blatant bias in one column and––as he did with his coverage of George McGovern––betray that same bias in the next.”