Go and see Star Wars on an impulse. Huge yawn. Guess we missed out on the background lore. Notice the make-up on Hayden Christiansen’s lips: digital is all-seeing and totally unforgiving. The moment when the film comes alive is in the electricity between Hayden and Natalie. They want each other but they can't have each other. Movies are about love. Perhaps this is what distinguishes them from television programmes. There are many different types of love - cliche - but love as seen in the movies is a particular strain and its more like a drug then the general kind of love we feel for relatives and friends.

In Moulin Rouge it was shown as the love of love. But it's more then that, i.e. more than a delusion on the part of the person suffering. It's like the fuel cell at the core of our being, but approaching it is dangerous because the stuff that's inside is addictive, unstable. So this kind of love may act more like a virus or disease. And that is the kind of love that movies are about, and that people grow up on, expecting to find it in their own lives. Michael Alig suffers from this; no amount of regular love can keep him happy, he's a junkie for this other kind of love. Perhaps to some degree we all are, and that's why we go to the movies.