Richard Corliss, Time Magazine Film Critic, Dies At 71

Richard Corliss, a longtime film critic for Time magazine, died Thursday in New York City a week after suffering a stroke. He was 71.

“Richard Corliss, Time’s movie critic for the past 35 years, conveyed nothing so much as the sheer joy of watching movies — and writing about them,” Time said in a eulogy on Friday. “He savored it all: the good, the bad, the indifferent. Except that he was indifferent to nothing. To any fan or friend who would ask whether a new movie was ‘worth seeing,' Corliss had a stock, succinct reply: ‘Everything is worth seeing.’ ”

According to Time, Corliss wrote around 2,500 reviews and articles for the magazine, including more than two dozen cover stories. He covered a variety of topics in addition to film, including yoga and Rush Limbaugh. He and fellow Time critic Richard Schickel compiled the magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies" list.

Corliss, who joined Time in 1980, worked for several publications in his career, including Film Comment, where he was the editor in the 1970s. He was the author or co-author of many books, including "Greta Garbo," "Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in American Cinema" and the BFI Film Classics' guide to "Lolita."

“It’s painful to try to find words, since Richard was such a master of them,” Time editor Nancy Gibbs told staff members in an internal memo. “They were his tools, his toys, to the point that it felt sometimes as though he had to write, like the rest of us breathe and eat and sleep. It’s not clear that Richard ever slept, for the sheer expanse of his knowledge and writing defies the normal contours of professional life.”

Corliss was born on March 6, 1944, in Philadelphia. He received a bachelor's degree at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia. He earned a master’s degree in film studies from Columbia University.

He is survived by his wife, Mary, and his brother Paul Corliss of New Jersey.

Corliss was a notable fan of Pixar films, calling “WALL-E” the best film of 2008 and “Toy Story 3” the best of 2010. His favorite film of 2014 was “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”