What makes a film great for you?

The approach that’s given to the story is what makes a film great to me. Aside from the details, stories revolve around the same themes and premises. What may change is the approach filmmakers give to their stories. Like Jacques Aumont says in his book Aesthetics of film: “When we go see a fiction film, we always go to see the same film and a different film”.  When a filmmaker does something creative and breaks the traditional format of constructing a story like Christopher Nolan in “Memento” or David Koepp’s approach to the ending “Secret Window” (if we focus on content alone) where instead of showing the usual negative consequences of murder, he presents it as a healing action for the main character. This is what makes a film great to me, having that something else, which makes it different from the rest of films, we’ve ever watched.