The Godfather was from a different time. I saw it when it came out and watched it again recently. By today's standards it's slow and humorless. Brando's performance which dazzled me back in the day seems heavy-handed now.

But EEAAOO hooked me from the start, and just kept building and reincorporating ideas that seemed to be throwaways.

Had I seen EEAAO thirty years ago, I have no doubt that I would have been overwhelmed with information, confused and somewhat vexed. But now everything is half an order of magnitude faster, meta as heck, and movies have the ability to portray any idea people can conceive of. I loved it.

(I discovered fairly recently that the classic show The Wild, Wild West was one of the origins of martial arts choreography. I am not a fan of violence, but martial arts choreography is honestly entertaining. No one really believes that anyone is getting hurt, and the complete disregard for Newton's Laws and reality is very funny. I wouldn't watch a whole film of it, but I loved what I saw in EEAAO.)

If you are watching contemporary movies, might I suggest Triangle of Sadness? It has a much more linear plot but it is as least as extreme as EEAAO. The first 20 minutes involve two thoroughly superficial if well portrayed people, but stick with it and you will be richly rewarded.

It has the same intensity as Hitchcock, but ends up being much funnier, and also has much more interesting politics.

(If you want something much closer to a contemporary Hitchcock, Woody Allen's Match Point (2005), one of his greatest films, is like a particularly gripping Hitchcock, and completely inverts the fawning on the rich thing that spoils some of Woody Allen's later work, which is why I believe it is not so well known.)

I think this review is a swing and a miss, but if you didn't take any risks, life would be a lot duller, and your track record is generally good, so keep going!!!