Worlds collide in most unusual ways inThe Nines, marking the feature directorial debut of John August, screenwriter of such offbeat wonders asBig Fish,Corpse Bride, andTitan A.E.. Ryan Reynolds plays Gary, a Hollywood television actor whose crack cocaine escapades land him under house arrest. A no-nonsense publicist (Melissa McCarthy) who specializes in rehabilitating bad-boy stars for public consumption keeps Gary in line until a sexy neighbor (Hope Davis) makes him wonder if his reality is truly all it seems to be. Indeed, once the question is asked, another world washes away the last one: this time Reynolds plays Gavin, a TV showrunner whose best friend (McCarthy) is dropped from his new series after a network executive (Davis) manipulates him. A watchful viewer ofThe Nineswill begin to note that certain themes and bits of dialogue overlap the first two segments of the film, and that certain key lines (e.g., "You’re not a man") are laced with double meanings. A haunting resonance, a sense that everything is imbued with some unknown quality or secret, overtakes one’s deepest experience of the movie. That feeling only grows in the final third of the story, in which Reynolds becomes Gabriel, a doting husband and father who leaves his wife (McCarthy) and child (Elle Fanning) with their stalled family car while he fetches help. Along the way he meets a wary stranger (Davis), and nothing is the same again. Everything loops into everything else in August’s clever story, which taps into that profound sense of alienation and dislocation most of us feel at one time or another, and pushes it toward the realm of myth. Fans ofDonnie Darkomay well findThe Ninesequally intriguing.--Tom Keogh