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Admittedly I don't remember a tremendous amount of it, but my recollection is mildly positive. If the 1995 movie is 2.5 stars outta 5 (in my personal rubric, that equates to 'I like it, but acknowledge it's not good', and also happens to be where all of Paul W.S. Anderson's films live), I'd give the 2021 version 3 stars.
It benefits from making use of the R rating, and having better fight choreography and stunt performances. I think those are much more important to get right than characterization or plot, at least in a Mortal Kombat movie.
For what it's worth, idgaf about the lore of the franchise, so a fan of the games may take issue with that take, but my perspective is one of a fan of martial arts movies, not necessarily an MK fan.
I never met an action movie I didn't like. If it's good it's good, if it's bad it's funny. Plus this is Mortal Kombat we're talking about here so I'm predisposed to like it. I agree it was better than the first, I'd say much better though.
What about Event Horizon? Has to be his best movie. I think it's a pretty damn good film.
I agree, Event Horizon is the best Anderson movie I've seen, with the caveat that I haven't seen his post-Resident Evil stuff, nor Soldier, and I've got a big soft spot for Kurt Russell. However, I am slightly more lukewarm on Event Horizon than a lot of folks. I haven't watched it in some time, but I recall being underwhelmed. To some extent, I think it was over hyped to me, as my dad raved that it was terrifying when he saw it in the theater. I did not find that to be the case, but, in so far as haunted house movies go, it's a decent one of those (IN SPAAAAAACE). My letterboxd says I gave it 3.5 stars and that still feels correct to me.
The thing that holds it back is that I think, in a different director's hands, there is a legitimately terrifying movie to be made using most of the same ingredients. I'm by no means equivocating these movies, but an interesting point of comparison is the Solaris remake that Soderbergh and Clooney did in the early 00s. They share the conceit of "there is a mysterious entity in space which keeps showing one of the characters visions of his dead-by-suicide wife to disastrous effect" (insert weird-that-it-happened-twice.gif).
By all accounts, the Solaris remake is not an exceptional movie (in fact, EH is rated slightly higher with a 3.3 vs Solaris' 3.2, for whatever that's worth). Also, Solaris is very much a character drama first and foremost, but there are a few sequences which I found legitimately unsettling in ways that EH mostly failed to evoke, despite covering similar beats.
In fact, I think I've talked myself into doing this as a double feature. Solaris I saw on television probably close to 20 years ago, and Event Horizon I watched on a laptop in Afghanistan, so I could stand to revisit both of them. I'm curious if watching them together will enhance the experience in any way, or if it will just give me tonal whiplash lol