The Otto Preminger Film Noir Collection (12)

BFI, £59.99

Although he directed romances, melodramas and musicals such as Carmen Jones and Porgy And Bess, Austrian-born Otto Preminger is perhaps best known for two works made 10 years apart and which could be said to bookend the film noir era – Oscar-winning 1944 mystery Laura and 1955's The Man With The Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra as drug addict Frankie Machine.

This three-disc set pulls together a trilogy of film noirs from that same period – Fallen Angel, Whirlpool and Where The Sidewalk Ends – which showcase the talents of the two actors who had come together so memorably in Laura: Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews.

In this context, the first two films effectively act as solo vehicles, with Linda Darnell playing opposite Andrews's unscrupulous drifter in Fallen Angel, and Tierney pitted against Jose Ferrer in sultry psychological thriller Whirlpool.

But in the sinewy, tense, morally ambiguous Where The Sidewalk Ends the two actors collide in both the usual way - with smeared lipstick and a hardboiled hero who doesn't take off his hat to kiss – and in a manner more akin to Shakespearean tragedy.

The film opens with Andrews's character, New York cop Mark Dixon, being upbraided for his brutal methods. We learn later from Dixon's nemesis, crime boss Tommy Scalise, that his father was "a hood and a gangster" and when Dixon accidentally kills a war hero suspected of a gambling den murder, dumps the body, falls in love with the dead man's wife then watches her father take the rap for the killing, he seems trapped in a Gordian knot of action and consequence. Like father like son? Maybe. But Dixon sees a way out that will at least keep his honour intact.

The final denouement feels a little truncated, but then this isn't an action movie, more a character study. It's notable, too, for night-time street scenes shot on location in New York and Tierney's New Look-style costumes, justified in the film by Tierney's character working as a couture model. The clothes were the creation of noted fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who would later dress Jackie Kennedy and who was married to Tierney at the time.

The high-definition digital transfers for this Blu-Ray edition were made by 20th Century Fox and look vivid and sharp on screen. Extras include audio commentaries for all three films by critic Adrian Martin, and an 80 minute recording of a 1972 interview between Preminger and Joan Bakewell. Thankfully the director, whose rather annoying affectation was to pretend not to remember half the films he made, is on decent enough form.

The Goob (18)

Soda Pictures, £17.99

They say three's a trend but following hard on the heels of Martin Radich's Norfolk, which screened at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, Guy Myhill's coming-of-age film about East Anglia's rural underclass is already starting to make the setting and theme feel overly-familiar. Like Radich's work The Goob uses "magic hour" cinematography to highlight the dissonance between the starkly beautiful countryside and the harsh characters who live in it. And like Radich's work it features a tempestuous father-son relationship (though in this case it's a step-father) and a sub-plot involving a pretty fruit picker from Eastern Europe. On the plus side, that step-father is played with typical menace by a heavily-tattooed Sean Harris. His character, Gene Womack, is an uglier and more charmless version of Michael Fassbender's character in Fish Tank blended with a little of Robert Mitchum's wandering psycho in The Night Of The Hunter. Honourable mentions, too, go to newcomer Liam Walpole as titular 16-year-old protagonist Goob, and Sienna Guillory as his mother, Janet. There's also a great deal of stock car racing, prettily shot by cinematographer Simon Tindall, and something of a speciality in these parts apparently: included in the extras is Crash, a documentary about the real-life Gene Womacks of the Norfolk scene.

The Tribe (18)

Metrodome, £15.99

Films with little dialogue are relatively commonplace on the arthouse circuit, films with no dialogue less so though they do occur. Of films shot entirely using Russian sign language and no subtitles at all there is only one, and this is it: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's searing portrait of life in a lawless Ukrainian school for deaf mute teenagers, a sensation at last year's Cannes film festival. And a hard knock life it is too. There is death, crime, violence, sexual assault, abortion and exploitation. Drugs and alcohol are rife and some of the more brutal and entrepreneurially-minded pupils also have a lucrative sideline in prostitution, pimping two of their classmates at an HGV lorry park. Like everything else in the film, these regular nocturnal forays are filmed in minutes-long Steadicam shots. But what's really exceptional about The Tribe is the effect it has on the ears of the watcher, as every sound becomes sharpened and comprehension becomes a matter of nuance, gesture and guesswork. But it's testament to Slaboshpytskiy's skill as a director that we're still able to follow it. Not a film you're likely to forget in a hurry.