This week, we start with an intense drama:

Stop-Loss

***

Rated R, 113 minutes.

Coming Tuesday to DVD.

For her first film since her Oscar winning 1999 Boys Don’t Cry , director Kimberly Peirce may have been the victim of a nation turned off by any film touching on the Iraq war.

This well-done but moderately received film focuses on decorated young Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), who returns to his (fictional) Texas hometown near Austin after serving tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Several members of his Army unit return with him. King agonizes when he sees his men suffer, but he also had his own traumatic experiences during the conflicts, which he mistakenly believed had ended with his second tour.

Paramount Pictures and MTV Films/Frank Masi

Ryan Phillippe, right, and Abbie Cornish are shown in a scene from Stop-Loss, a drama examining a U.S. policy that puts soldiers back in battle zones.

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But the Army invokes the loophole known as “stop-loss.” To his agonizing disbelief, he learns he is to be sent back to Iraq. Instead, he takes off, setting off the film’s escalating chain of events. As Phillippe plays him, King is nothing unusual, just a normal person who knows his limits.

Meanwhile, King’s friends have their own travails, such as Steve (Channing Tatum, who could be the next Brad Pitt), who unravels when he no longer has a uniformed superior applying discipline.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who could be the next Robert DeNiro, plays Tommy, another unhinged soldier slated for future problems.

Peirce deftly captures this mixture of conflicting emotions, while sagely avoiding both easy cliches and political polemics, staying instead with the ample inner conflict. Stop-Loss ranks as one of the best Iraq war-affiliated films, even if the public hasn’t warmly embraced them.

Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard offer commentary on the DVD. Also included is a 21-minute “making of” featurette in which Peirce explains the film’s genesis and eventual production.

Also, 11 deleted scenes and a 10-minute featurette on “A Day in Boot Camp.”

*

Heathers — 20th High School Reunion Edition **** As Jason Dean says, “The extreme always makes an impression.”

Looking back on this seminal film about teen angst, it’s both hard to believe it’s been 20 years, and how well it stands up, paving the way for a string of inferior imitators over the next two decades. Rife with black humor, the story centers on a pair of disaffected teens who go on their own killing spree.

Winona Ryder plays Veronica, the nice girl who thinks she wants to join the high school clique known as the “Heathers,” the smarmy, snobbish beauties who reign at every high school. Her disgust takes an unexpected turn when she meets Jason Dean (Christian Slater).

Daniel Waters’ brilliant script retains its biting wit (“Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?”), and Michael Lehmann’s direction still looks clever and, at times, strangely melodic. Another look at this old favorite will be surprising.

Rated R, 103 minutes.

The newly transferred film comes on two discs, with the film on the first disc, with commentary from Lehmann, Waters and producer Denise Di Novi. The second disc includes the trailer, the 21-minute featurette “Return to Westerburg High,” and the 30-minute “Swatch Dogs and Diet Coke Heads.”

Many of the original participants tale part in the features and offer the following Heathers trivia: Jennifer Connelly was the first choice to play Veronica; Heather Graham was offered a part but her parents forbid it; and, most weird, Stanley Kubrick had a copy of the script, sent to him by writer Waters, who had high hopes Kubrick would direct. Imagine.

*

Careless **1/2 In this deadpan comedy with a large shaggy-dog quotient, Colin Hanks stars as Wiley Roth. He shuffles through life working in his dead-end job at a Los Angeles book store.

One day, he finds a severed finger on his kitchen floor.

Similar to David Lynch creating a mystery around a severed ear in Blue Velvet, director Peter Spears takes Eric Laster’s script and sustains our interest for an hour and a half.

Shortly after finding the dislocated digit, Roth meets the mysterious Cheryl (Rachel Blanchard), who has a bandaged hand and seems to be missing a finger.

But she doesn’t want to talk about it. As the romance escalates, so do other mysteries. Tony Shaloub is hilarious in his performance as Wyatt’s father, a role he delivers without hardly getting off his couch.

Rated R, 90 minutes

On DVD.

*

The Pledge **1/2 Luke Perry and C. Thomas Howell star in this contemporary western written by Jim Byrnes and directed by Armand Mastroianni (no kin to Marcello). Perry plays Sheriff Matt Austin, a by-the-book lawman whose sole aim is to capture the man who killed his wife and son.

But things take a surprise turn when Austin discovers that the killer murdered the lawman’s family at the behest of a land speculator out to corner a coveted section of land.

Well-paced and dotted with some standard movie violence. Aided by an able supporting cast of Lisa Brenner, Kim Coates, James Keane, Jacklyn DeSantis and Johann Urb.

Not rated, 89 minutes.

*

Flakes —Zooey Deschanel plays Ms. Pussy Katz in this romantic comedy written by Chris Poche and Karey Kirkpatrick and directed by Michael Lehmann (Heathers, The Truth About Cats and Dogs).

She lives with Neal (Aaron Stanford), who works in an unlikely New Orleans cereal restaurant.

But the quarrelsome pair lives in an Airstream trailer attached to a Cadillac convertible, so their quirkiness credentials are established.

Neal becomes obsessed with retaliation when a similar restaurant opens across the street.

Eventually, even the softhearted Ms. Katz finds it time to let go of her unreliable partner. 

Not rated, 84 minutes.

On DVD.

*

Also this week: Blood Brothers, Dungeon Girl, Impact Point, Sleepwalking.