RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE

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Everything after its striking opening battle sequence is downhill in this predictably sad addition to a flawed movie franchise based on a video game.

Returning writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson takes advantage of the film's 3D potential for "breaking the window" only once when Milla Jovovich's Alice throws shurikens in the direction of the camera. The sharp metallic throwing stars fly out before your eyes, and for a minute it seems like there might be something to the hi-tech special effects and ninja-styled action on display.

Cut to Alice losing her martial arts super powers after being injected by corporate baddie Wesker (Shawn Roberts). A trip to Alaska reunites Alice with her long-lost best friend Claire (Ali Larter), and the duo fly to Los Angeles where they make the mistake of landing atop a high-rise prison where a small group of survivors wait for rescue from the millions of encroaching zombies the fill the city streets below, and the entire planet.

Unintentionally campy, the ridiculously plotted dystopian story makes a marginal action movie like "The Fantastic Four" look like sheer genius by comparison. Ali Larter perpetually acts with her mouth agape like she's trying to attract flies, but Milla Jovovich has held on remarkably well to her stunning good-looks and agile physical abilities.

Rated R. 97 mins.

THE LAST AIRBENDER

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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"Battlefield Earth" has a new rival for the title of "worst-film-of-the-last-20-years."

M. Night Shyamalan extracts some of the worst melodramatic acting performances ever from his largely child cast in a 3-D movie that works best unseen. The gobbledygook story follows the 100-year rebirth of Aang (Noah Ringer), an "avatar" monk-like child martial artist who can control water with his kung fu moves — oooooooh.

Even Dev Patel ("Slumdog Millionaire") stinks up the screen as Prince Zuko, the abused son of Fire Lord Ozai (Aasif Mandvi). Zuko desperately wants to regain favor with his father by capturing Aang, rather than allowing his dad's military underling Commander Zhao (laughably played by Aasif Mandvi) to deliver Aang first.

Beyond obvious criticisms, like Shyamalan's foolhardy decision to cast white actors as Asian characters, is the film's incomprehensible storyline about spirits of the four elements. Brother and sister Sokka and Katara (Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz) follow Aang on a tour of remote global locations where they engage in lackluster fire-and-ice battles when Aang isn't being captured and escaping.

The 3-D visual effects are yawn-inducing in a film that should have been called "The Last Flatus Bender." If only it were Shyamalan's last cinematic fart, the world would be a better, and less stinky, place.

"The Last Airbender" sucks real bad.

M. Night Shyamalamadingdong go home, and don't come back.

Rated PG-13. 113 mins.

ZERO STARS