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With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’re highlighting the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies, shown Western audiences a barometer of life in 21st Century China. Ash is Purest White was both the most expensive and, arguably, least political film that Jia has made (read into that what you will) but it was also his most shape-shifting, adventurous and heart wrenching work, too. The director’s partner Zhao Tao provides that heartbeat as the wife of an absent mob guy who goes on an odyssey to find him. The film–and perhaps the world of Jia itself–would simply evaporate without her. – Rory O.

The angry canine is bearing its teeth, barking loudly and ready to bite. Marcello (Marcello Fonte), however, isn’t the least bit phased. A dog groomer who plies his trade in a small beachside town in Southern Italy, he has the ability to calm the angriest of hounds; despite the quaint little storefront business he runs, he’s earned the nickname “Dogman.” Marcello’s loves his daughter (Alida Baldari Calabria), the scuba-diving trips they take off the coast and his weekly evening soccer games. For a little extra cash, he...

A version of this story on “Dogman” first appeared in the Foreign Language Issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.

Marcello Fonte won the best-actor award in Cannes for his performance in “Dogman,” Matteo Garrone’s film about a mild-mannered dog groomer (and part-time drug dealer) who finally gets tired of being bullied by a local gangster.

The film is Italy’s entry in this year’s Oscar foreign-language race, and this is one in a series of interviews TheWrap conducted with directors of the foreign contenders.

Also Read: 'Dogman' Film Review: Good Man Goes Bad in Muscular Italian Drama

You shot the film in the same town where you shot some of “Gomorrah” 10 years ago. Why do you keep going back?

Matteo Garrone: I also shot a movie called “The Embalmer” there in 2002. It’s a place that I love. For this movie, I was looking for...

Matteo Garrone’s Dogman features many of the same themes and motifs as his 2002 film, The Embalmer. Its grisly narrative is again loosely based on real events drawn from the news, it is again set in a run-down coastal suburb in southern Italy, and it again focuses on the skewed power dynamics between two male characters, one tall and the other short. The metaphorical slant, however, is even more pronounced this time around. By depriving their David and Goliath story of geographical and chronological specificity – both setting and time period are kept purposely vague – Garrone and his co-writers, Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudisio, have also stripped the film of any genuine social relevance. The result is a philosophically bankrupt, if effectively constructed, spectacle of violence.

The two protagonists are Marcello (Marcello Fonte), a literal and figurative little man who owns a dog grooming salon, and Simone (Edoardo Pesce), a hulking...

After 2002’s The Embalmer and 2004’s First Love, Matteo Garrone would receive proper international acclaim with Gomorrah – winning the Grand Prix for the film in Cannes back in 08′. Followed by Cannes comp entires in Grand Prix winning Reality (2012) and Tales of Tales (2015), Garrone’s fourth is titled Dogman – the name of a pet grooming shop and tale of it’s owner.

Dogman premiered last night, but our critics caught the 8:30a.m. screening and the picture has played well with an average of 3.2 from nine critics.

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Though it has far less outright violence than Gomorrah, whose oppressive criminal atmosphere it shares, Matteo Garrone's Dogman is just as intense a viewing experience, one that will have audiences gripping their armrests with its frighteningly real portrayal of a good man tempted by the devil. Once again set in the Camorra-ridden hinterlands around Naples, the new film pours the various threads running through the Italian director's work into a boiling cauldron of poverty, ignorance and self-interest. The result is a perfected version of Garrone's The Embalmer, written in the form of his dark fables from Tale of Tales.

Here the ...

Though it has far less outright violence than Gomorrah, whose oppressive criminal atmosphere it shares, Matteo Garrone's Dogman is just as intense a viewing experience, one that will have audiences gripping their armrests with its frighteningly real portrayal of a good man tempted by the devil. Once again set in the Camorra-ridden hinterlands around Naples, the new film pours the various threads running through the Italian director's work into a boiling cauldron of poverty, ignorance and self-interest. The result is a perfected version of Garrone's The Embalmer, written in the form of his dark fables from Tale of Tales.

Here the ...

ROME -- Domenico Procacci's Fandango Prods. said Thursday it has appointed Marco Ugolini as general manager. Ugolini is a former marketing director of Dischi Ricordi S.p.A., one of Italy's most important music labels and distributors, which is now part of Germany's Bertelsmann BMG. He has extensive knowledge in multimedia and home video sales and marketing. Ugolini will oversee Fandango's domestic productions, international co-productions and movie distribution. Fandango, whose productions include The Embalmer, Remember Me and Respiro, has recently started a small publishing business as well as a music label.