I'm finding lately that I enjoy hearing Quentin Tarantino talk about his movies more than I enjoy actually watching them. It wasn't always this way, of course. Like many movie geeks who came of age in the '90s, I had my fragile little mind rocked by the one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and still consider Jackie Brown one of that decade's finest achievements and Tarantino's masterwork.

The new indie drama Shame, which opens in limited release on Friday, certainly earns its NC-17 rating, what with the full-frontal nude shots of its leading man and lady (Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan), as well as several prolonged and ultra-revealing sex scenes and its frank depiction of sex addiction. Despite all of this erotically-charged content, the movie itself isn't particularly... well, sexy. That's largely intentional of course, as director Steve McQueen is clearly more interested in stroking moviegoers' intellect than their libidos. The same can't be said of the following movies from the past two decades, all of which were designed for maximum titillation value, but turned out to be about as erotically-challenged as Zooey Deschanel's latest Manic Pixie Dream Girl on New Girl. And we're not talking about soft-core Skinemax titles, which are un-sexy in their own distinct way. These were all studio releases with big (or semi-big) name actors and actresses pretending to get it on for our benefit. Really guys, you shouldn't have. No, seriously... you shouldn't have.

In the fall of 2005, celebrated writer/director Kenneth Lonergan started shooting his sophomore feature Margaret, a drama about the aftermath of a tragic bus accident featuring a cast that included Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo. Six years later, the movie is finally being released in theaters. What exactly took so long? Well, it depends on who you ask. One version of events paints Lonergan as an indecisive perfectionist that was unable to deliver a cut he was satisfied with. Another version points the finger at one of the producers, claiming he attempted to encroach on the director's contractual "final cut" provision and didn't pay his share of the movie's budget. Either way, Margaret remained trapped in limbo until Lonergan finally came up with a cut that he and the studio were ready to release. The only question now is will it be worth the protracted wait? We'll have to see come Friday, but in the meantime, here's a scorecard of some of the other recent movies that have suffered similarly long delays before hitting U.S. screens.

Despite a handful of high-profile disappointments -- Green Lantern and Cowboys & Aliens to name just two -- this summer proved to be a pretty good one (box-office wise, at least) for Hollywood. Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger showed that comic book movies are still a draw, Bridesmaids kicked off a strong season for R-rated comic hijinks and a few -- gasp! -- original, non-franchise movies like Super 8 and Crazy Stupid Love actually became modest hits with critics and audiences. But there was one genre that moviegoers resoundingly rejected during the summer of 2011: horror.

Twenty years ago, the news that Ridley Scott was going to be revisiting the futuristic world he created in Blade Runner would have been met with hosannas by that 1982 film's passionate fanbase. But after two decades, too many "director's cuts," an overabundance of disappointing prequels/reboots/spin-offs of other seminal sci-fi movies and Scott's own spotty recent track record (Robin Hood or Body of Lies anyone?), it's hard to view this as anything other than a bad idea. Nevertheless, there's still a chance that a trip back to the Blade Runner universe could yield something good or even great. We humbly offer a few suggestions on how to avoid a Phantom Menace-like backlash.

The press release is only a few hours old, but already Batman fans are divided over Anne Hathaway getting cast as Selina "Catwoman" Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises. (Note: Although the release only says "Selina Kyle," I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that she will, at some point, put on a black jumpsuit and rob an apartment.) Tom Hardy is getting less flack for playing the normally Hispanic criminal Bane -- Hardy's muscles in Bronson and Bane's awful part in Batman & Robin help a lot -- but Hathaway is getting hit on all sides from people criticizing her looks, her acting ability and her personality, saying she's all wrong for the sultry cat burglar. While many are equally quick to defend her, I thought I'd throw in my two cents as to why she's perfect for the role. And no, I don't mean "purrr-fect." I'm not Eartha Kitt.

The main characters of Four Lions are terrorists. Okay, wannabe terrorists -- at the start of the movie, they haven't actually done anything, and aren't receiving orders from anyone, but they certainly have ideas. They're also total idiots. Not just a little slow on the uptake, but utterly and completely moronic, in addition to being morally misguided. So you have to respect a movie that, somewhere in the midst of making fun of them relentlessly, makes you care enough about them that, by the end of the film, you're half-rooting for them to succeed, and when one dies, you're legitimately sad about it.

Everybody is talking about how creative and original Christopher Nolan's Inception is, but it turns out Gyro Gearloose thought of it first. The inventor/anthropomorphic goose actually invented his own shared-dreaming device back in 2004, in an Uncle Scrooge comic book, and the Beagle Boys tried to use it to get the combination to Scrooge's giant money vault. Did Nolan read a Disney comic book six years ago and forget about it? Or did somebody plant it in his brain while he was sleeping? Out of curiosity, we skimmed through our comic book collections to see what's what, and found that all of Nolan's movie plots can actually be traced back to kids' comic books and comic strips. Scandal!

Well, it's official: Lindsay Lohan is going to jail. True, the sentence is only for 90 days, and now it seems like it's only going to be about 25 days, and the last time she was in jail it was only for 84 minutes, but it's still going to put a crimp in her moviemaking schedule. (When will her Linda Lovelace biopic be completed now?) Luckily, this will open up a whole new genre for her -- prison movies! With her newfound prison cred and, hopefully, scared-straight work ethic, studios will be scrambling to get Lohan behind bars again, this time for a hefty paycheck. Here are a few prison films we think Lohan should remake, with storylines custom-tailored for the actress's professional and criminal rap sheet.

The Internet collectively gasped yesterday when silver screen sexpot Megan Fox was not invited back to the Transformers movie franchise. True, Fox had bad-mouthed the plot (as it was) and safety standards of the last two movies, as well as director Michael Bay, but Bay seemed to be okay with her controversial interview style, and to actually be looking forward to making her sweat it out in a leather catsuit one more time. But then, suddenly, she was out, and the search for her replacement was underway. Of course, now Fox is saying that she left the production of her own free will, that she in fact chose not to come back, and while that would be a dubious career move for her, we're going to assume she's telling the truth, especially since she immediately followed it up with several more clarifications that ring true. Here's some additional knowledge Fox dropped on us.