I want to pick up this thread again, because after mulling this topic over in my head I suddenly realised something. Any movie/book that I label "great" has usually one thing in common - they are not plot-driven. There might be some sort of a plot, but it's not particularly important and if there is any, it's usually only used a a tool to get across a point/discuss an idea/deal with emotions/cultural or social conflicts etc.

So the point of these movies/books isn't the plot in itself, at least not that alone. The point of it is the discussion of ideas or emotions. Let me take an example (not from any book/movie I know, just a fictious example from my own head):

Say you have a story about a yong couple who travels to a cabin for the weekend. They travel with his family, her in-laws. If you go by plot or narrative, nothing much happens. They go for a hike, repair a fence, share a good dinner, and spend the evenings with a glass of wine and some board games. If you were to make a plot-driven book/movie about this, it would be quite boring because "nothing happens". 

However, there is a different way to view this cabin trip. If you take it form the young lady in the couple's perspective, perhaps she was really looking forward to this trip because it reminds her of cabin trips her family used to take when she was a young girl. Perhaps it will laden the trip with nostalgia and melancholy as well, because of it. Perhaps she is dreading to cook for her in-laws, nervous the food won't be good enough. Perhaps she doesn't like playing board games because her husband is a soar loser. Perhaps the hike was the best part of the trip for her, because she finds such calm and tranquility in nature. Perhaps she really liked helping out fixing the fence, feeling she could show to her in-laws that she could be useful and helpful.

And so on and so on. If you go into each and everyone who joined on that cabin trip, there is a whole world of thoughts, feelings, emotions and associations with every single thing they did on that trip. You can find the whole world and the whole nuances of humanity in cooking dinner, hiking and fixing a fence. 

This is what I call "the magic of the mundane", and it's the most rewarding and deep experience of books/movies I can have. 

Interestingly enough, my two favorite Johnlock fanfics are both of this genre - they have very little plot/narrative and focus mostly on character and relationship development, thoughts and feelings, more than a particular plot. 

However, it's not that I was thinking: "Oh, this fic has no plot, that means I love it." I actually wasn't aware of it at all until I was going to recommend one of them in a thread here on the forum. I went: "Oh, you gotta read this fic, it's awesome! It's about..." and then I stopped, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Because what on earth was it about? I really struggled to find some kind of summary, because there really isn't any plot, only a very vague outline of character/relationship development. And I love every second of it .