We start with a no-budget film made in England, Ark.:

Shotgun Stories

***

Rated PG-13, 91 minutes. Coming Tuesday to DVD.

Proudly wearing its low-budget indie credentials on its worn lapels, this gripping drama boasts a fine integration of professional actors and some obvious non-professionals.

Michael Shannon, who has turned up in several Hollywood films such as Bug and World Trade Center, stars in Shotgun Stories as Son Hayes, the oldest of three brothers in a rural Arkansas family.

At the death of the boys’ father, who deserted them long before, Son Hayes and his brothers go to the man’s funeral, insult him and his memory in front of the man’s second family, and thereby set off an escalating Hatfield-McCoy revenge drama.

The tension mounts in this impressive directing debut of Jeff Nichols, as he captures the small-town feel as well as the rivalries and the insane mentality that demand retribution. Gritty, realistic and believable.

The DVD holds commentary from Nichols, an isolated music score, a photo gallery and the trailer.

City of Men

(***)

This follow-up to Fernando Meirelles’ 2002’s multiple Oscar-nominated City of God takes place in the dangerous Morro da Sinuca favela of Rio de Janeiro. The teenaged Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) entices his friend Acerola (Douglas Silva) to help him find his father. Meanwhile, Acerola’s even younger wife Cris (Camila Monteiro) escapes the slum to work in another town, but she leaves Acerola in charge of their year-old son.

About the same time, a gang war erupts between the slum’s warlord and Laranjinha’s cousin. Before long, everyone in the area becomes involved in an escalating, frightening feud as Acerola flees while trying to protect his son. Paulo Morelli co-wrote and directed this grim look at Brazilian poverty.

Rated R, 106 minutes. The DVD offers the 15-minute featurette, “Building a City of Men,” which includes behind-the-scenes footage as well as interviews with the director, writer and actors.

Organizm

(**1/2)

This surprisingly effective, obviously low budget horror-thriller mixes elements of Alien, Tremors and even War of the Worlds .

Richard Jefferies wrote and directed this often engaging tale of nature run amok.

When a remote military base in New Mexico is slated for demolition, a seemingly unhinged young man, Frank Sears (Johnathon Schaech), breaks in with information dating to the late 1950s, when his mother worked on the base.

She once told him about a secret experiment deep underground. Instead of blowing the place up, intrepid military types, including Carrie Freeborn (played by Erica Leerhsen, who experienced worse problems in Texas Chainsaw Massacre), decide to see what’s hidden in the subterranean chambers.

The forgotten experiment comes to life, as a deadly organism with expanding tentacles quickly expands. But shooting it or blowing it up only makes it bigger, and worse, madder. Decent special effects that cover a variety of grotesqueries.

Rated R, 92 minutes. The DVD offers the trailer and commentary by Jefferies and Schaech and Leershen.

Two standout TV series arrive this week:

The Closer: The Complete Third Season

All 14 episodes of the third season of this excellent police procedural drama arrive on four discs.

Co-producer and Emmy-nominated actress Kyra Sedgwick stars as Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Brenda Lee Johnson, a transplanted Georgian with a thick corn-pone accent and awful fashion sense. She seems out of place in the rarefied Los Angeles community, but her expertise surfaces when she invariably and cannily figures out the crime, often drawing out a confession in this weekly whodunit.

Every episode unfolds rapidly, with few pauses. Many scenes are filmed with a Steadicam, giving the series a jumpy yet realistic feel. Precise detail is given to the detective work, possibly aided by the contributions of consultant and co-producer Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles district attorney.

In this season, Chief Johnson solves myriad crimes, including a mass murder blamed on bigamy, as well as finding the murderer of a body buried 18 years previous. The smart series is complemented by a touch of humor, intelligent detective work and a fine ensemble cast, including J.K. Simmons as Johnson’s boss.

The DVD also offers three brief unaired scenes, six minutes of bloopers, and the 19-minute featurette “The Art of Interrogation,” which examines how information can be gleaned through various methods. And more.

AMC

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has a corner office, a creative knack and a wandering eye in the AMC series Mad Men.

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Mad Men: Season One

Our week’s top TV-Series-to-DVD celebrates the debut season of a highly praised surprise hit. The brainchild of Matthew Weiner, who co-wrote and reportedly micromanaged all 13 episodes, this weekly drama played on AMC (formerly American Movie Channel) after being turned down by several outlets, including HBO, where Weiner once wrote for The Sopranos.

The engrossing ongoing drama is set in New York City in the early 1960s, between 1950s repression and latter ’60s turmoil. It takes place at the Madison Avenue ad agency Sterling Cooper (the Cooper is played by ’60s Broadway icon Robert Morse). Inside this privileged, all-white arena, the in-charge males, led by Jon Hamm as Don Draper, take multiple martini lunches, constantly smoke cigarettes and invariably bed their secretaries.

The series serves as commentary on the price of success as well as how we have evolved on various prejudicial issues. The series garnered numerous awards and drew universally positive critical acclaim.

The four discs, also on Blu-ray, come in a box that looks like a Zippo lighter, and they hold several complimentary commentaries, including the comprehensive, three-part, hour-long featurette “Establishing Mad Men,” and the 19-minute “Advertising the American Dream.” And more.

Also coming to DVD this week: Meet the Browns, Vantage Point, Wild China.