The Nines (15)

Now here's something a bit different. John August's triptych about the paranormal or is it merely the paranoid? stars Ryan Reynolds in three overlapping roles. First, he's a brattish TV actor who freaks out on a drug trip. Confined by house arrest after crashing his car, he starts receiving weird vibes from his neighbour, and then from "the beyond". That's the opening section. In his second role, he's Reynolds the TV writer, and is being royally shafted by the network; in the third, he's a video-game designer who might be, er, God.

There's a dark Lynchian strain to the ludic plotting, with maybe a pinch of Charlie Kaufman-esque wit to leaven the doominess. Reynolds is surprisingly effective in triplicate, as are his co-stars Melissa McCarthy and Hope Davis, who gets a wonderful out-of-nowhere scene serenading Reynolds with the Peggy Lee classic, "Is That All There Is?" Definitely worth a look.