24 hours on Craigslist (Michael Ferris Gibson) Rating: NNN Rating: NNN
The compelling thing about want ads is that they’re anonymous admissions of desire in all its permutations, from the plebeian through the peculiar to the downright creepy.
24 Hours On Craigslist, the Doc Soup series’s last instalment before Hot Docs floods Toronto with documentary goodness, peeks behind the curtain of anonymity to expose the narratives behind dozens of posts on Internet bulletin board craigslist.com.
Beginning with the innocuous, as in a guy selling a boat or a couple looking for a rabbi to marry them, and proceeding to the downright sinister, as in a laconic man advertising for a “sex party” in his seriously nasty basement flophouse, 24 Hours is a fast-paced, witty and mostly affectionate exposé of the vulnerabilities and oddities of people who want things.
And while the occasional bursts of cultish pro-craigslist jingoism are a bit much, extended interviews with subjects, including a pair of perky BDSM enthusiasts, a wryly self-analytical porn star/masseur and a “heavy metal chef” who names his epicurean concoctions after Metallica songs, have all the happy unbelievability of a Christopher Guest mockumentary, minus the satirical venom. (April 6, Bloor Cinema)
