I'm sure others have already thought this, but here we go: yes and no, we're entering a golden age.
Yes, it's never been so possible to make a movie. Anyone with a middle-class income can afford the gear to shoot and edit a movie of professional quality. You don't have to raise tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And one difference today is that, with websites like YouTube, Vimeo, et al., it's more possible than it's ever been to actually get your movie seen by people other than your family and friends.
Alas, it's never been so hard to make a living as a movie-maker. Hollywood locks up theatres more than ever, and arthouse theatres are going under left and right. Video-On-Demand services are becoming more professional ... which means more profit oriented ... which means less open to indie efforts. And, of course, BitTorrent makes it easy to acquire an extensive movie library for free (though I don't think every download represents a lost sale, as anti-piracy lobby groups insist).
But if you're willing to do it at a loss, you can make any movie you want about anything you want. Sure, we see a lot of people trying to be Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie on a five-grand budget. I think every 22-year-old makes the same movie about a bunch of 20-something boys who throw a house party and fail to connect with the women in their lives. And we've all seen our share of post-apocalyptic sci-fi road movies.
But there are also some really interesting movies out there -- movies that probably wouldn't get made if not for the creator's obsession and bloody-mindedness in doing it. The pile of garbage may be bigger, but the absolute number of diamonds among it is higher too.