Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Coco

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Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 11-25-2017, 08:13 AM:

I saw Coco in the Cine Capri auditorium at Harkins Northfield yesterday at 10am. Harkins is currently playing three shows of Coco on the large screen, followed by two of Justice League. I guess that's one advantage of digital projection.

The presentation was great, with aggressive surrounds, though the volume was a little low. The audience was terrible, however. I emailed guest services asking them to monitor their auditoriums. I suggested they take a page from the Alamo Drafthouse playbook.

Coco is the best movie I've seen all year. It's beautiful to look at and absolutely heartwarming. The plot has just enough twists. The characters are compelling. It brings to life a culture I only knew a little bit about, and told me enough to become immersed.

Go see it!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-27-2017, 11:35 AM:

We watched "Coco" with a group of friends. Most of us liked it a lot, except for one couple who are big Marvel fans - they said the story was predictable. I didn't think it felt that way at all.

I was surprised by the number of parallels to "Back to the Future" in the movie.

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

- The kid is transported to a different place and needs to get home
- He meets an oddball who helps him out
- He plays guitar and sings onstage in order to make something happen
- When his plans aren't working, he begins to "disappear" from existence

And of course there is a parallel to "The Sound of Music"

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
(with music being banished from a home due to a misfortune, and it takes music to make everything OK again).

But I enjoyed it a lot nonetheless. The animation is incredible and the movie gives you a LOT to look at...Pixar sets the bar again.

I did think the story meandered a little in spots, especially in the middle. The voice cast was uniformly outstanding.

**** out of ***** for me.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 11-27-2017, 07:50 PM:

CINEMA: AMC Town Square 18, Las Vegas, NV
AUDITORIUM: 1
PRESENTATION: AMC Dolby Cinema Recline-O-Vision in Black Void of Space auditorium
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Recliner controls took several attempts to work, could not get seat to unrecline at end of show
RATING: Three stars (out of four)

The placement of this building, originally a Rave, kind of sucks. The front is on the second level of an outdoor walking mall so there's no place to park close. Once you park, you have to figure out where the entrance is, an ordeal in itself because the visible exterior signage is on the side and back of the building. Once you circle the whole place and see the mall directory sign pointing you up, you have to climb a crap ton of stairs to get there. I'm sure there's an elevator hidden somewhere, but I didn't see it.

THE PLOT: Olaf burns down Christmas. Wackiness...oh, wait...that's the full-length Frozen sequel that ran before the advertised feature. At least it felt full-length. It just went on and on and had like a half dozen musical numbers. I almost went back out of the auditorium to double-check that I was in the right room.

THE FEATURE PLOT: A kid is dying to become a musician. Wackiness ensues.

This is one of Pixar's better original efforts recently. They do a good job of laying out the whole Day of the Dead nonsense and providing beautiful and colorful visuals. The story pretty much follows the Pixar template but has more of their classic wit than I remember in more recent efforts. But when it goes dark, it goes dark.

They could have wrapped it up about ten minutes before they did, but Pixar always seems to feel the need to stretch out endings for some dumb reason.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-27-2017, 08:38 PM:

I think the Frozen thing seemed long because of the pacing. The beginning of it just seemed to lag...it picked up speed after about 10 minutes for me.

I think it feels long because people are accustomed to a 4 to 6 minute short at the beginning of these Pixar and Disney movies. It seemed to have more laughs than the main feature did, though. Josh Gad makes the film...he's a funny dude. The songs were just OK, no match for the Frozen originals.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 11-27-2017, 10:59 PM:

quote: Sam Graham
I almost went back out of the auditorium to double-check that I was in the right room.

An incredible amount of people here have come out wondering why we started the wrong movie. Pretty much every show has at least one person come out and ask.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 11-28-2017, 01:42 PM:

anyone hear playing the Spanish language/English subtitled DCP version - what is the audio 5.1 or 7.1??

saw this yesterday and absolutely loved it!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-01-2017, 08:47 PM:

quote: Buck Wilson
An incredible amount of people here have come out wondering why we started the wrong movie.

Here too -- despite we have the Olaf thing in our advertising, and a one-sheet for it right next to the Coco one-sheet.`

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-02-2017, 10:45 PM:

I watched most of this movie again tonight and enjoyed it a LOT more than the first time. I think this is one of those shows you need to see more than once - the first time I was so blown away by the animation (and trying to spot John Ratzenberger) that I kind of got lost in the mechanics of the story. After understanding more about how the whole plot works, it was way better the second time. I have seen a few audience members come out with confused looks on their faces and I expect if they'd watch it again they'd really love it.

I forgot to mention the music -- it was really good, too.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 12-23-2017, 02:11 AM:

My girls and I enjoyed this together tonight. There's definitely lots to enjoy on repeated viewings if you don't mind the macabre aspect (and they don't!), and the beautiful affirmation of family relationships is just plain good.

What's not good is the tepid-to-poor presentation at the Edwards Town Center theater in Valencia, CA. The volume was medium at the loudest, no bass below about 60Hz, and Sony dim-bulb dual-head projection had pretty colors but tepid brightness as expected. What really, REALLY irked me was the right third of the picture was misaligned between the two outputs and therefore annoying fuzzy or double-edged. I hate going to this theater more every time I do. But for nights like tonight where it's a choice between foregoing the movie altogether because there's not time to drive 20-40 miles, or going there, we went there. $14.50 per seat for that! At least it was a room built for scope and the screen was the right size.