Five years after South Korea’s first moon mission proved a spectacular failure, another generation bravely steps up to try again. Poignantly, among this new trio is Hwang Sun-woo, whose father was among the astronauts who perished in that original endeavor.

The new astronauts’ rocket launches without incident. But just when they’re about to enter lunar orbit, a solar flare knocks out comms. While attempting to fix it, Sun-woo’s zero-grav colleagues are killed in an accident, leaving him in the command module all alone. With a meteor shower en route and an oxygen supply ever-dwindling, Sun-woo’s only hope for survival is the first mission’s flight director and capsule architect, Kim Jae-guk, aka the man he holds responsible for his dad’s death.

As our heroic astronaut trapped on the dark side of the orb of green cheese, Kyung-soo Do is fine, if a bit too wiry for a believable space-cadet build. He seems to have been cast more for looks than acting, which may be the case, as I’ve since learned he rose to fame as a former member of the K-pop boy band Exo. The film’s true emotional weight comes from Sol Kyung-gu (2012’s The Tower) as Jae-guk, doing his damndest to right a past wrong and assuage his own guilt. Essentially, he’s in the Ed Harris role of Apollo 13, with fewer degrees of separation to those above.

It’s impossible to credibly discuss The Moon without mentioning Apollo 13 or The Martian, as writer/director Kim Yong-hwa (the Along with the Gods duology) cribs liberally from both. And that’s fine since he does it so skillfully, accentuating his ticking-clock narrative over expensive effects (impressive though they are) because having Things Go Boom shouldn’t be No. 1 on the call sheet. With technical gabber adding realism (or a convincing approximation) to a precarious situation veering from “all systems go” to “no” and back again, The Moon rises into an intelligent crowdpleaser — hard sci-fi with a soft human touch.

Sometimes that touch is too soft, as when characters lock into awestruck Spielbergian stares, mouth agape. Can you imagine The Martian concluding with Jeff Daniels congratulating his NASA colleagues across the room with Taylor Swift’s hands-in-shape-of-heart gesture? —Rod Lott

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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

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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

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Although cartoonist Lee Falk is best-known for creating The Phantom, his Mandrake the Magician arrived first. Even before the more popular Phantom leapt from the comic strips page to the big screen to slam evil in his own serial, the latter beat him to it … and then resurfaced one undistinguished Wednesday night on NBC in the pilot pic Mandrake. Like The Phantom, Mandrake comes with an orphaned origin, being raised by a Tibetan monk with the unmistakable voice of James Hong.

In the present day, Mandrake (Anthony Herrera, 1976’s Helter Skelter) enjoys the high life as a Vegas stage illusionist, looking not unlike David Copperfield if he neglected combs. One night, Mandrake’s chintzy act is interrupted by the death of an elderly scientist in the audience. Before croaking, the old man manages to gasp the name “Arkadian,” which happens a tycoon played by Brady Bunch patriarch Robert Reed.

Among other business ventures, Arkadian owns an amusement park, eventually allowing Mandrake to have a showdown atop the world’s fastest, tallest, bestest roller coaster, once he starts investigating the scientist’s “heart attack.” With the help of his sorcerer sidekick (Ji-Tu Cumbuka, Mandingo) and sexy stage assistant (Simone Griffeth, Death Race 2000), Mandrake uncovers a whole Manchurian Candidate conspiracy involving Arkadian employees as sleeper agents.

Mandrake boasts the power of hypnosis by touching people’s heads, thereby projecting their memories on the wall. More often, he touches the gaudy medallion hanging from his neck and — presto! — an object appears to confuse his adversaries. Among the illusions used are a tiger, a bird of prey and a brick wall. This being made for TV, the effect is hardly cinematic. And this being 1979, Mandrake plants an unexpected kiss on the scientist’s daughter (Gretchen Corbett, The Savage Bees), then explains, “That was the only thing I could think of to shut you up.”

Helmed by another Falk, the no-relation Harry (High Desert Kill), the telefilm doesn’t have much production quality — example: cheap kitchen timers sub for bombs — which Herrara nearly matches by having even less to offer as a leading man. Watching Mandrake won’t hurt (much), even as it fails to do the trick. —Rod Lott

An anthology of speculative fiction, Portals posits that man has created a black hole. Global blackouts follow, as do odd behavior from citizens, citywide evacuations and mysterious monoliths — portals, if you will — that pop up everywhere with no apparent rhyme or reason. This setup, courtesy V/H/S: Viral producer Christopher White, is full of possibilities.

The four selected to explore, however, greatly underwhelm. A family flees its California home, encountering a portal on a desert road. Amid the chaos, a 911 call center’s operations are paused by a portal suddenly appearing between cubicle rows. Sisters in Indonesia stumble upon a portal in a parking garage. Finally, after the credits, scientists in Liverpool play guinea pigs with the portals, taking one giant leap for mankind.

Portals is nothing if not consistent, but that consistency arrives as aggravating ambiguity. Nothing is explained; rules appear to be as bendable as wire hangers; characters are barely introduced; they spout mumbo jumbo that hardly moves things forward. If you intend your sci-fi film to be that vague, may I suggest your name be Stanley Kubrick or Andrei Tarkovsky? Being deceased, neither numbers among the helmers involved: The Blair Witch Project’s Eduardo Sanchez, Beyond Skyline’s Liam O’Donnell and V/H/S/2 contributors Timo Tjahjanto and Gregg Hale.

Portals’ problem is its script, not the effects. Undaunted, White tried again two years later, reviving his vertical-rectangular-object concept with a fresh coat of paint (and lesser-known directors) as the omnibus Doors. I won’t knock it ’til I try it. —Rod Lott

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