The Cooler

A stranger mentors a young Reno gambler who weds a hooker and befriends a vulgar casino regular.

In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.

In Las Vegas, two best friends--a casino executive and a Mafia enforcer--compete for a gambling empire and a fast-living, fast-loving socialite.

New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.

Poker addict Mike McDermott knows the game inside out, but loses his money one night in a game to Russian-American gangster Teddy KGB. Promising his partner Jo he'll give up, he meets up with best friend Lester 'Worm' Murphy, just out of prison and owing lots of money to the wrong kind of people. McDermott becomes his co-guarantor and now there's only one way to raise the money, the pair have to get back into the game.

Jack Manfred is an aspiring writer who to make ends meet, takes a job as a croupier. Jack remains an observer, knowing that everything in life is a gamble and that gamblers are born to lose. Inevitably, he gets sucked into the world of the casino which takes its toll on his relationships and the novel he is writing.

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

Confined to a claustrophobic hotel room, the heir to a hotel empire and the dominatrix who has primed him for success become locked in a battle of wits and wills as he tries to end his relationship with her.

In the 1950s, a seemingly sensible newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law undertake parallel journeys of risk, romance, and self-discovery.

A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

Gamblers who "took" an out-of-town sucker in a crooked poker game feel shadowy vengeance closing in on them.

Dan Mahowny was a rising star at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. At twenty-four he was assistant manager of a major branch in the heart of Toronto's financial district. To his colleagues he was a workaholic. To his customers, he was astute, decisive and helpful. To his friends, he was a quiet, but humorous man who enjoyed watching sports on television. To his girlfriend, he was shy but engaging. None of them knew the other side of Dan Mahowny--the side that executed the largest single-handed bank fraud in Canadian history, grossing over $10 million in eighteen months to feed his gambling obsession.

Molly Bloom, a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game.

A short, unhappy affair with a married man leads a dedicated schoolteacher into the alcohol-and-drug fueled underworld of singles’ bars, where she begins to engage in a pattern of dangerous sexual activity.

Lake Tahoe, 1969. Seven strangers, each one with a secret to bury, meet at El Royale, a decadent motel with a dark past. In the course of a fateful night, everyone will have one last shot at redemption.

William Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk.

Nancy Stokes, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she has never had good sex. Now that her husband has died, she is determined to take a tour of sexual vistas that until now she has only imagined. She even has a plan; it involves an anonymous hotel room, and a sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande.

While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.

John leads an ordinary life with a monotonous routine. One day John runs into a woman on the subway who is as beautiful as she is mysterious named June. His encounter with her finally leads him to have a goal in his bumptious life.