Terminator 2
Jurassic Park
True Lies
Dark Knight
or even Independence day
yeah, you're highlighting the best movies ever made by the best directors of the modern era. It's quite a bias. dark knight is not that old. The median quality big budget movie back then vs the big budget nowadays; there really are obvious improvements in consistency.
I think ratings are useful, but hate previews. My favorite movies are always divisive; usually a large difference between critics and user review eg: ran, matrix, the newest king arthur, speed racer, blade runner.
As for small budget vs big budget movies, i don't agree. Some things are just objectively better. Better teams, Costuming, special FX, action scenes of scale, hiring better scorers. it's not 100% causal, but it definitely has strong effect. Some genres can have smaller budgets and still effective (horror); but some just need budget. Interstellar, jurassic park, minority report, lotr would just not have been the same quality with half the budget.
IMO, Nolan addressed this perfectly in the prestige movie. One one hand you have the greatest trick ever made, but it had no pizazz, marketing or budget (Bale's transporting man). It was his secret weapon that couldn't fail. I believe strongly that this was a metaphor for his movie memento; imo the best original script ever written. However, Memento could have been much improved with more budget; but the writing was so amazing you could have terrible acting and budget and that movie would still be amazing. He used it to launch his career and make the kinds of movies he never could have made previously.
Same thing with Coen's miller's crossing, although they hid the low budget very well.
At the same time, we're going to get movies i strongly dislike like avatar. Statistically focus grouped movies with insane polish and almost zero originality. Titanic give Cameron huge hair pulling self-doubt; avatar was the opposite and waste of good special effects.