‘Time’ Film Critic Richard Corliss Dies At 71 [Breaking]


Richard Corliss, who served as the film critic for Time for 35 years, has died at the age of 71.

According to a report on the magazine’s website, Corliss passed away Thursday after suffering a stroke the previous week. In a note addressed to the staff of Time, editor Nancy Gibbs said she had trouble trying to describe Corliss.

“It’s painful to try to find words, since Richard was such a master of them. 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. Everyone who had the pleasure of working with him has stories of his kindness, his quirks, his humor, his obsessions, the bright, fresh breezes of his head and heart.”

Richard Corliss was a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work, noting that they “allow for no idle bystanders; you either get with the pogrom or get out of the way.” Nearly three years ago, the Inquisitr reported that Corliss was one of the many to praise Tarantino’s bloody western epic, Django Unchained.

“A pastiche that’s nearly as funny as it is long, and quite as politically troubling as it may be liberating, Django Unchained is pure, if not great, Tarantino. At 49, after eight features, the writer-director has become his own genre, running weird, violent, maniacally elaborate variations on the movies he learned to love as a Manhattan Beach video-store savant a quarter-century ago.”

Time senior editor Richard Zoglin noted that Corliss was a man who loved watching and writing about movies.

“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.’ He meant it.”

But Richard Corliss didn’t always fall in line with the popular opinion. Last year, he wrote a negative review for the summer blockbuster Godzilla, and before he worked for Time, he panned the first Star Wars film in 1977.

Fans of Corliss also paid tribute to the film critic on Twitter.

Richard Corliss is survived by his wife, Mary Corliss, and his brother, Paul Corliss.

[Image via Twitter]

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