Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose does the thing — playing an astronaut, that is — in the film I.S.S. Those initials are short, obviously, for International Space Station, which mice scientist Dr. Foster (DeBose, 2021’s West Side Story) joins in the opening moments.

Foster’s arrival brings the station’s total head count to six: three Americans, three Russians. Unlike their countries’ leaders, they get along pretty well. On her second day, however, that cordial relationship heads straight for the scissors when they witness massive explosions decimating Earth below. Almost immediately, both sides are ordered by their respective governments to take control of the orbiting station “by any means necessary.” Goodbye, glasnost!

If a suspense film in the stars seems an odd match for DeBose, that goes double for director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the acclaimed documentarian of Blackfish. Turns out, such worries are for naught. DeBose holds her own as part of an iron-strong ensemble that includes Chris Messina (2023’s The Boogeyman), John Gallahger Jr. (The Belko Experiment) and Hollywood’s most reliable Dane, Pilou Asbæk (Overlord). While Cowperthwaite lets each shine, she places particular attention where she should: creating tension and stress. Now, we’re not exactly dealing with Gravity here, but the movie is better than its release in the wasteland of January would suggest.

Of course I.S.S. employs effects, but it’s not driven by effects. No alien aboard, either, although the fear of “the other” pervades every corridor as each cosmonaut and astronaut remains uncertain who, if anyone, is an ally. Made all the more problematic by a setting that’s claustrophobic, despite the vastness of space, the movie is an interesting game of trust involving man, machine and mutually assured destruction. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

From his Denver home, arrogant right-winger Brent Ziff (Abe Goldfarb) hosts a popular livestream trafficking in conspiracy theories and other hot-button topics — you know, loves crypto, hates pronouns. It’s the kind of show where phrases like “big simp energy” get uttered on the reg. Twenty minutes in, he connects with a longtime listener, First Time Caller.

That would be Leo (voiced by Brian Silliman, Men in Black: International), who points Brent to a feed of a concert in Seattle, because in a few minutes, it will be wiped out by a surprise tsunami. Brent figures Leo for yet another crackpot … until the unexpected event actually occurs. According to Leo, his words aren’t predictions, but proclamations.

And his psychic gift feels like a massive bowel movement, so there’s one thing Matt Damon’s similar soothsayer in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter didn’t have.

Although slick in production, First Time Caller lacks more than a hyphen. At an abbreviated 75 minutes, it’s essentially a real-time exercise of two people conversing in one room, and our eyes meet only one end of the line. (Comedians Greg Proops and Kevin Pollak play other callers in brief spoken cameos.) No matter how much co-directors Goldfarb and J.D. Brynn gussy up the screen — notably with superimposed audio patterns — the situation isn’t arresting enough to sustain itself.

The movie’s biggest handicap is not that Brent is an exceedingly obnoxious, even odious character. (Although he is.) It’s that this concept’s legs are built to stand as a short film, a short story or perhaps a single episode of TV or a podcast. (In fact, this is based on a podcast called The Earth Moves, two eps at 53 minutes total.) Once Brent and Leo start speaking in circles, the more obvious First Time Caller is biding time until reaching its shit-or-get-off-the-pot conclusion. We want to see the story through — just without several trips ’round the same ol’ mulberry bush.

Compare Brent to shock jock Barry Champlain of Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio: Barry (Eric Bogosian) is every bit as unlikable, right down to his venomous political views and haughtiness toward everyone else. Even with markedly lower stakes and an extra half-hour, Talk Radio is more compelling because Bogosian’s script gives Barry what Brent sorely lacks: multiple points of conflict with multiple characters. Or in short: subplots. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.