Michael Miner Movies

Heather Veitch is a bubbly, buxom blonde who looks like the sort of woman who could have a career as a stripper if she wanted one. And once upon a time, that's just what Heather did for a living, but after several years of working in adult entertainment, she'd developed a serious drug addiction and a profound spiritual emptiness. Heather embraced Christianity, began attending the Sandals Church in Riverside, California, and struck up a friendship with the church's pastor, surfer turned preacher Matt Brown. Heather was happy in her new life, so much so that she wanted to share the good news about Jesus Christ with women not unlike herself. With Matt's help, Heather formed a group called "JC's Girls," an outreach organization for women working in adult entertainment that offers them a positive message about Christianity without heaping negative judgments against them. While Matt understood the value in Heather's new mission, not all of her fellow parishioners felt the same way, and she found herself receiving hate mail, angry phone calls and even death threats for urging strippers to attend services at Sandals. Filmmaker Bill Day spent two years following Heather Veitch's unusual story, and The Pussycat Preacher is a documentary about one woman's efforts to teach pole dancers about the Rock of Ages. The Pussycat Preacher won the Audience Award for Favorite Documentary Feature at the 2008 Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Writer/director Wayne Kramer offers a glimpse into the aging Las Vegas casino world with the romantic drama The Cooler. Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is extremely unlucky at gambling, and he owes the Shangri-La casino over 100,000 dollars. He is so unlucky that he is hired as a "cooler," someone to gamble next to high rollers and give them some of his bad luck to stop them from winning. This arrangement works out for awhile, until Bernie has almost paid off his debt and meets cocktail waitress Natalie Belisario (Maria Bello). The two start to fall in love and Bernie's luck begins to change. However, the old-fashioned mob boss Shelly Kaplow (Alec Baldwin) isn't going to let Bernie go so easily. Meanwhile, Larry Sokolov (Ron Livingston) arrives on the scene to help update the business management of the old mobster-run casino. Also starring Joey Fatone and Paul Sorvino as lounge singers. The Cooler was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi