What makes a good movie? No really, what is it?

[Aldurin]

So I've been watching a lot of movies that came out within the past decade with and finding the quality to be more jagged than a heart monitor. Recent disappointments include Lockout (pretty meh) Skyfall (I can't unsee the haphazard patchwork in the story) and just a myriad of other rocks and turds that attempt to bury the gems.

Then I watched The Hunt for Red October again, since it was on TV at the right moment, and I was astounded by how much I was pulled into such a mundane plot and narrative. I can feel the tension of the submarine chases/battles, I'm excited by the outrageous attempt to board a submarine via helicopter during a storm, and the characters pull me in and make me want to keep watching (Sam Neill's character talking about his ambitions of visiting different states in an RV is more characterization than many movies nowadays will risk doing). The special effects aren't excessive, flashy and trying to seize my attention by the balls, it just comes together so well.

The cherry on top is how this is based on Tom Clancy's book, which I also found the same sort of feeling from reading. That flabbergasts me since when people try to make movies out of books, it's easier to go with stuff that isn't rich with detail and depth (Stephen King gets so many books into movies yet many far better writers like Dean Koontz do so few because strong writing is hard to translate to a different media).

So what does make a good movie? We have so much technology to help every aspect (special effects, easy access to materials on helping write, etc.) and yet so many directors merely use those to dress up poor results instead of creating an amazing movie and then adding technology where it will enhance the experience (THfRO could have gone without the renderings of the submarine battles, but it's thrown in to add that visualization and to make the tension more profound).

What makes it good?