You are brave to take on this topic! As your post suggests, it's a minefield. So--without disagreeing with anything you've said--I'll just add:

The things that make a movie great are the same things that make any other art form great. My top three are truth, beauty, and originality or freshness of vision. The most important is truth (a variation on the old idea that "fiction is a lie that tells the truth"). A great book or painting or film--whether it's "Hamlet" or "Guernica" or "Casablanca"--shows you something about life that's true. And it does so in an aesthetically pleasing or harmonious way that no one has done before, or done in quite the same way. All of the films on your list that I've seen meet those tests along with the others you've mentioned.