Is this all a decade of movies is worth?

According to the American Film Institute's new list of the 100 greatest films, released last week, the last 10 years have produced only four great ones: "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (No. 50), "Saving Private Ryan" (No. 71), "Titanic" (No. 83) and "The Sixth Sense" (No. 89).

I get bloated just typing those titles. Granted, the last 10 years have been a weak period for films. They can't touch Hollywood's golden era of the '40s, or the heralded '70s, when maverick directors roamed the studios.

But surely, there's been more to see in the last decade than Haley Joel Osment whispering "I see dead people."

The new entries to AFI's 10th anniversary list confirm what we already knew: This is the era of the blockbuster. Except for "Saving Private Ryan," these are all tentpole popcorn movies — excellent films, but we're still dealing with hobbits, ghosts and Celine Dion.

AFI's list — to commemorate the 10th anniversary of its original top 100 — was chosen from ballots sent to 1,500 filmmakers, actors, writers, critics and others in Hollywood. Those ballots listed 400 nominated films, 43 of which came from the last decade. Other new nominees included "Spider-Man 2," "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," "Shrek" and "Chicago." It would seem this decade's best representatives are superheros, pirates and ogres.

This is, of course, an entirely subjective enterprise — even though the AFI list does boost movie rentals nationwide — and it's ridiculous to argue too vehemently over any "best of" list.

But it's still fun. So ...

Two of the "new" films on the ballot strike me as worthy of the top 100 list: Michael Mann's brilliant, stylish "The Insider" isn't "based on a true story" in the typical movie sense — it's intensely realistic in portraying a whistle-blower from Big Tobacco (Russell Crowe) working with a news producer for CBS (Al Pacino). There isn't a better movie about corporations and modern heroism. And Wes Anderson's classically quirky comedy "Rushmore" is far more than a cult flick. In a long comic lineage of oddballs, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) tops them all.

Many others that weren't on the ballot are also deserving. Two that could sit comfortably on the shelf next to "Rushmore" are "Election" and the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski." The latter rises to the level of classic — after all, its whole premise is film noir held up to the funhouse mirror of "The Dude."

The early '90s was the height of the independent film era. Two of the top talents from that time made films that deserve consideration: Paul Thomas Anderson's ambitious, Altmanesque "Magnolia," and David Fincher's "Fight Club" (which was on the ballot).

If there's one film that I would put atop any list of the last 10 years, it's the overlooked "You Can Count on Me," starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo and Matthew Broderick. Directed by playwright Kenneth Lonergan, it's one of the most humanistic movies you'll ever see.

Others worth noting are Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line," Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight," Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" and the older but underrated Paul Newman picture "Nobody's Fool" (1994).

The truth is, the last 10 years may deserve only a few spots on the top 100 list. Really, many of the best movies of the past decade have come from foreign countries.

Walter Salles' "Central Station" and "The Motorcycle Diaries," the co-directed "City of God," Park Chan-wook's "Oldboy," Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's "The Lives of Others," Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love" and Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother" all rival — if not surpass — American releases.

So rather than mope about AFI's treatment of the last 10 years in movies, it's worth expanding our view to the wider world of film. There's more than "dead people" out there to see.