GREYHOUND (Apple+)Greyhound tells a small-scale story against the backdrop of a monumental historical event, taking place over the span of just a few days on a single warship. It's set in the midst of the Battle of the Atlantic, a yearslong skirmish between Allied and German naval convoys in the leadup to WWII, in a part of the ocean known ominously as the Black Pit.

Tom Hanks stars as Ernest Krause, a Navy commander overseeing a convoy of ships transporting supplies and passengers across the ocean, which is blindsided by an attack from Nazi submarines. Krause looks on helplessly as one ship after another is picked off, and he methodically strategizes as more and more enemy ships enter the fray.

It's a pretty simplistic premise, focused on the tactics of the mission and little else. The script, which Hanks wrote himself, consists almost exclusively of strategy and logistics, and of stern men in uniform yelling things like "Hold course!" and "Brace for impact!" and "Ease the rudder!" Krause's crew are mostly nameless grunts, and even he remains an enigma: We know he's devoutly religious and has a girlfriend (played thanklessly by Elisabeth Shue) waiting at home, but that's about it.

Greyhound is a weirdly truncated film, too: Right as the movie seems to be ramping up, it abruptly ends (the credits start rolling around the 80-minute mark). But as far as its filmmaking is concerned, it's as sturdy and waterproof as the ships themselves, and your uncle who's obsessed with WWII-era submarines will probably dig it nonetheless.

THE OLD GUARD (Netflix)The Old Guard is yet another comic book origin story, but one with real potential. Based on a series of graphic novels by Greg Rucka (who also wrote the script), it concerns a quartet of ageless, mythical warriors who have fought in all of history's greatest wars and now work as for-hire special ops in the 21st century. They're particularly qualified for tough jobs, because they can be riddled with bullets and merely brush it off.

Their self-appointed leader is Charlize Theron as the brilliantly named Andromache of Scythia (or Andy for short), once treated as royalty in the days of ancient Greece. Alongside her are former Napoleonic soldier Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), and the scrappy Joe and Nicky (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli), once sworn enemies during the Crusades and who fell in love with each other over the ensuing decades. The Old Guard's latest recruit is a Marine named Nile (Kiki Layne), who heals remarkably quickly after having her throat slashed in combat and who finds herself mentally connected with her fellow immortals. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is on the fringes, trying to harness their abilities for questionable purposes.

The notion of invincibility as both a superpower and a curse is nothing new, but The Old Guard finds some interesting wrinkles in its premise: Not only does their mere existence create a chain reaction in world affairs, butterfly effect-style, but they've also discovered that their immortality is actually a limited resource, and that one simply stops healing after an indeterminate number of deaths.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood, best known for romances like Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights, might seem an odd choice for a blockbuster tentpole, but she brings a blunt brutality to the action sequences and lets her actors develop believable personalities.

PALM SPRINGS (Hulu)This smart, funny high-concept romantic comedy plays out like a millennial version of Groundhog Day, but if Andie MacDowell had gotten sucked into the day-repeating limbo alongside Bill Murray.

It begins as a guy named Nyles (Andy Samberg) wakes up the morning of a wedding somewhere in the desert, surrounded by people he barely knows. He spends all day floating in the pool, guzzling cans of beer, interrupting the big speeches and looking totally unfazed as his girlfriend hooks up with the officiant in the bathroom.

He almost seems to be following a rehearsed set of instructions, and that's because he's been through this night before: He's been trapped in a time loop for who knows how long, always waking up on the same morning no matter what he does.

But then Nyles starts flirting with Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the sister of the bride, and she unwisely follows him into a strange portal that appears in a nearby cave. Now she's stuck in perpetuity with a guy she barely knows, and once she realizes that trying to escape is futile, they both decide to make each new day as different as the one before.

You'd think the possibilities of this kind of premise would have been exhausted already the high-water mark is Groundhog Day, of course, and the recent Netflix series Russian Doll mined similar territory but the script, written by Andy Siara, manages some unexpected twists, including a vengeful wedding guest played by J.K. Simmons. Samberg and Milioti have excellent chemistry, too, and their ease with each other lets us buy into the rumpled optimism of the premise, which never gets bogged down in seize-the-day platitudes.

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Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron and Andy Samberg bring big stories to the small screen - Pacific Northwest Inlander