I certainly hope the irony of this exchange isn't lost on the both of you, the mass produced Criterion products being seen as the saviors against the wave of mass produced products.

mass produced for a different audience, however

Which doesn't make any difference in the context of their discussion, it's still mass produced and sold in supermarkets and thus by definition not obscure/unique/for initiated only.

I thought the implication was that audiences in the past had better taste

If that was the implication then it's an even worse take, as it's textbook survivorship bias. There are plenty of terrible older movie, they didn't make it to criterion collection.