Time film critic Richard Corliss dies

NEW YORK – Richard Corliss, the longtime film critic for Time magazine, has died after suffering a major stroke earlier this month, the magazine said. He was 71.

“He conveyed nothing so much as the sheer joy of watching movies – and writing about them,” Time theater critic Richard Zoglin said. “He was a perceptive, invaluable guide through three and a half decades of Hollywood films, stars and trends.”

In his 35 years as the magazine’s film critic, Corliss wrote more than 2,500 reviews and other articles.

Zoglin said Corliss had an encyclopedic knowledge of film and its place in cinematic, cultural and American history.

His reviews were “authoritative but never intimidating” and his tastes “populist but eclectic,” ranging from Chinese kung fu and Disney animation to films by Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog.

Early in his career, Corliss dismissed the box office “Star Wars” hit, stating that “the movie’s legs will prove as vulnerable as C-3PO’s.” But he soon embraced the films by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Corliss also was the author of several books “Talking Pictures” in 1974 was a survey of major Hollywood screenwriters. He also wrote a monograph on Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita” and last year published a book on iconic film mothers titled “Mom in the Movies.”