In ‘Coco,’ Pixar journeys to Mexico and beyond the grave

Pixar films have never been shy about death. The “Toy Story” films are, in part, about mortality. The poetic highlight of “Up” is a wordless sequence of a spouse’s passing. The Earth, itself, was left for dead in “Wall-E.”

But Pixar plunges fully into the afterlife in “Coco,” a brightly colored fable surrounding the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

The imagery of skeletons and graves in a kids’ movie might have put off other animation studios. But director Lee Unkrich (“Toy Story 3,” ″Monsters, Inc.“) envisioned a film about family heritage and keeping . . .