"The summer begins with a new crop of sexually explicit, mostly European movies set off from Cannes to the festival circuit and eventually to brief art-house runs..."

"... while Hollywood churns out its chief export of gun-happy escapism and wholesome kid stuff. Between those two channels the classic sex scene — once a staple of high-gloss, adult-oriented, mainstream movies — has been largely forgotten and ignored, recommitted to very esoteric margins it sprang from generations ago.... Today, whether it’s in 'Long Shot' or 'Rocketman,' the sex scene has been reduced to a shorthand, an instantly recognizable grammar that begins with some jokey or flirtatious foreplay, cuts to some flesh (tasteful enough to honor the actors’ no-nudity clauses), then discreetly cuts away....  [A]udiences are now far more attuned to how life and art can’t be separated: Stories of Maria Schneider feeling manipulated and misused on the set of 'Last Tango,' or [Abdellatif] Kechiche’s actresses expressing similar misgivings about how they were treated in 'Blue Is the Warmest Color,' force the discomfiting realization that, all too often, our visual pleasure has been generated by means of an exploitative and dehumanizing production process.... To be sure, there’s precious little to mourn in the death of the kind of ogling soft-core wish-fulfillment fantasies that male directors foisted on viewers for nearly a century. But is abstinence really our only option?"

Asks Ann Hornaday in "Sex is disappearing from the big screen, and it’s making movies less pleasurable" (WaPo).

The top-rated comment: "Could not disagree more. What is implied is always more erotic than what is shown. It is the same with horror movies these days. Every gory act is shown in excruciating detail. With both sex and horror in film, audiences are too rarely given the chance to use the imagination."

I don't go to movies anymore, but I'd say the problem is a lack of adult material but I don't mean the extended, graphic sex scenes. I mean the stories and the emotions. I don't see enough of what's there to really know, but it seems to me there are a lot of flashy spectacles with quick cutting and loud noises and sudden surprises. It's boring unless you're a child or feeling childish.