I mean, I can acknowledge that the story and characters of North by Northwest don't have a ton of depth, but . . . every time I watch it I find it zips right along, even knowing what's going to happen. That's hard to quantify, but I think you've just got to put it down to Hitchcock's skill as a director. He has four movies on the list and every one deserves to be there for one reason or another. He created several of the foundational texts of cinema.
My only real gripe with the movie is that the cut near the very end, from Cary Grant holding Eva Marie Saint's hand on top of Mount Rushmore to them in the train car at the end always feels kind of awkward to me, like it's too much of a cheat that they never showed us how the two of them got out of that pickle (when every one of Grant's other escapes is super clever and entertaining). The visual joke of the train entering the tunnel (time for sex!) that actually ends the film helps make up for it though.
Sure, let's put the Coens on the list. But not at Hitch's expense. Forrest Gump or The Sixth Sense can go instead.