This article asserts that we film snobs are wrong about "today's movies aren't as good as they used to be". I tried to conduct an experiment on imdb.com, to compare top ten grossing movies for each decade year (1950, 1960, etc). But imdb only computes top-grossing figures as far back as 1980. For 80, 90, and 2000, I found that only 2000 had a top 10 film (Gladiator) that I consider excellent. Everytyhing else I found to be unwatchable awful, though I suppose I should give 1980's "Ordinary People" another chance.
2000: (10%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/2000/top-grossing
1990: (0%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1990/top-grossing
1980: (0%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1980/top-grossing
imdb does calculate for all years a ranking by "total votes" of its voting visitors. Here's how I rate each year's list, by fraction of "top ten vote-getting films" that I rate as excellent:
1940 (70%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1940/total-votes
1950 (90%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1950/total-votes
1960 (60%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1960/total-votes
1970 (50%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1970/total-votes
1980 (20%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1980/total-votes
1990: (10%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/1990/total-votes
2000: (20%)
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/2000/total-votes
2004: (20%) I didn't include Million Dollar Baby, Garden State, or Crash, though I'm open to adding MMB and Garden State.
http://imdb.com/Sections/Years/2004/total-votes
Thus I must conclude that I really do think that the quality of films overall has diminished, but a lack of box office statistics before 1980 makes my study non-definative.
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