Word: helens
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...intensely seductive, almost mesmerizing quality in her music has helped Helen Folosade Adu, the Anglo-Nigerian singer better known as SADE (pronounced Shah-day), sell more than 22 million copies of her first three albums. But the sameness of Sade's smooth, samba-scented love songs has always verged on monotony. Now, after a four-year silence, the singer is back with Love Deluxe (Epic), an album that is virtually indistinguishable from her previous ones. The final track, an overly long instrumental, underscores the fact that Sade has no new ideas. Anyone who owns an earlier Sade album would...
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the movie is its treatment of interracial relationships. Candyman was killed because he violated the taboos of a racist society. But even in 1992 he has problems wooing Helen. In the final moments of the movie, Candyman offers Helen the prospect of immortal partnership with him and a baby he kidnapped from the projects...
...movie is an effective mixture of fantasy and reality--you're never quite sure whether Candyman is real--but there are weak moments. The portrayal of the academic lifestyle is ridiculous: at a dinner, Helen tells a professor that she will "bury" him with her findings, and the professor sneeringly refers her to an article he wrote on Candyman 10 years ago. When her research partner gets killed, you almost expect her to be happy over her increased prospects for tenure...
...this interracial family (from hell) is not to be. Helen kills Candyman and takes over for him as number one hook-wielding psychopath. The spirit of Candyman lives on, but in a lily white--albeit burnt--body. Racial integration is possible on a very limited scale. Whites can integrate Black culture but cannot mingle with Blacks...
...general, the direction skillfully manipulates time and distance to create moments of pee-in-your-pants terror. From the ominous overhead shots of Chicago's freeways to the imposing grayness of the University of Illinois, the dark backdrop intensifies the terror. And terror abounds, most notably during Helen's psychiatric exam and her memorable first kiss with Candyman (his mouth is filled with bees). The soundtrack by Philip Glass is appropriately haunting...