OP, I love your premise (though some posters don't seem to get it

) and totally agree with the examples you cite. (Giselle Bundchen is also a highlight iin that very small role as a Vogue staffer and Emily Blunt's fellow mean girl.)
So, how do you feel about Castaway? (SPOILER ALERT here.)
Whenever I come across it on TV, I get totally sucked in, despite the fact that I really only love the "frame" scenes where you get to see Tom Hanks's life before the plane crash and then again after he returns and tries to reclaim his old life. Everything in the middle is fascinating the first time you watch it -- the character is so resourceful! -- but then it's just a bit tiresome the second time around. Even Hanks, a great actor, can't hold your attention when he's talking to that volleyball. OTOH, the whole Moscow sequence at the beginning is amazing storytelling -- efficient and gripping -- and Hanks's interactions with his former colleagues (his old buddy who recounts the details of Hanks's "funeral"), his girlfriend who still pines away for him (Helen Hunt -- very effective in just a few scenes -- e.g., showing him the maps she used to track the search for his downed plane), and -- perhaps most impressive -- Chris Noth as the rebound guy she married after everybody told her to stop pining away her husband (and he's a dentist -- Chris Noth (aka Mr. Big from Sex and the City) as a dentist? But he pulls it off.