I don't think the last ten years have been very impressive for the Oscars. I mean, look at the list:
1995 Braveheart
1996 The English Patient
1997 Titanic
1998 Shakespeare in Love
1999 American Beauty
2000 Gladiator
2001 A Beautiful Mind
2002 Chicago
2003 Return of the King
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2005 Crash
I confess that I haven't seen The English Patient or Titanic. (Both movies looked too sappily romantic for me.) Oh, and I refuse to see Crash. Out of the rest, well, I'm a die-hard Tolkien fan, so I'm happy that the Lord of the Rings movies were recognized, even if Fellowship of the Ring is (arguably) the best of the three. But as for the others:
Braveheart isn't that great of a movie, besides being anti-gay and revisionist history and all that. Gladiator is maybe better as an action/period piece, but still not a classic. Shakespeare in Love was very entertaining, at least, but I liked Elizabeth (not Saving Private Ryan, actually) better. American Beauty was... hmmm. A good movie, I guess, but such a bleak view of human nature. Chicago was just another musical, not particularly great stacked up against the classic musicals of a generation or more ago. A Beautiful Mind and Million Dollar Baby were hideous, emotionally manipulative pieces of crap that might have seemed moving at first viewing, but which left a really bad taste in my mouth. (And I wouldn't have seen Crash simply because it was written and directed by Paul Haggis, and I didn't like the writing in Million Dollar Baby. So it isn't just sour grapes.)
So in my opinion, in the last ten years the Academy has made one good choice (RotK), two choices that I'm not sure about (but Titanic is movie history from the shear amount of money it made, I guess, so at least it's memorable in that respect), a bunch that are watchable but probably not classics, and a couple real stinkers.
Honestly, given the Academy's recent record, I'm not going to pay much attention to their choices in the future.