The History Of Concrete is one of the all time great ‘internet rabbit holes’ (see also: David Farrier’s Tickled) turned into a documentary feature.
After dealing with the headache of a leak in the ground floor of his apartment building, John Wilson (HBO’s How To With John Wilson) goes on a New York City odyssey to understand the equal parts bland and fascinating history of one of the most ubiquitous man-made substances on earth.
Tangents abound: from Hallmark movie minutiae, tequila hawking indie musicians, the Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race which laps for days and days around a high school in Queens, to on-set visits of Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme on location shoot, and being a guest at Kim Kardashian’s award’s dinner (sitting opposite Tim Robinson). Mainly, however, the documentary is a sly take on modern urbanism, and ad hoc city maintenance – a distracted meditation on urban planning and unsexy infrastructure, by way of an existential crisis about art and purpose and death.
There is nothing boring about the subject matter. This is mainly due to the empathy and self-deprecation, and occasional acid-wit to which Wilson presents the entire thing using only his handicam, editing suite, and screen capture tools to show the difficult banality of creating something this weird, and getting it in front of eyeballs.
The <a href="https://cinemamix360.com/2026/08/04/teaser-trailer-bad-lieutenant-tokyo/” title=”Teaser Trailer: "Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo"”>trailer below, however, is more of a John Williams-esque symphonic tribute to the patchwork of city repairs in New York City, and it is a marvel unto itself.
