The Hustler is an excellent Paul Newman film about billiards.

Blow-Up is a bizarre anxiety drenched film about a photographer who may have captured evidence of a crime in the background of a photo.

Grand Prix is a neat film about formula 1 racing, with some of the best action photography ever.

If queer film is your jam, the work of Kenneth Anger is always worth checking out, Scorpio Rising being my favorite of those I've seen

If you like sci-fi and experimental shorts, Chris Marker's La Jetee is pretty cool, and is what 12 Monkeys was based on.

As for super ambitious metanarrative experiments, Symbiopsychotaciplasm: Take One is incredible.

Often, I'm in the same boat as you. For example, Skinamarink is one of the worst offenders I've seen in recent years. If a movie does it once or twice, I don't mind it, as it can soften you up to allow more clever scares to get further under your skin, or have you on edge whenever the score cuts out. But doing it too much ruins the effect.

There are ones I think are genuinely good, though. Ones without that loud audio stab, or where it comes slightly delayed such that the image already spooked me and the noise hits it home, work for me. I think of a moment in Hereditary when you all of a sudden see movement over a character's shoulder in a darkened room that had appeared empty (avoiding details for spoilers). It's more earned, because the terror spreads like a wave through the audience as people realize it at different times, as the movie doesn't call attention to it, but if you're watching the screen, you'll see it eventually.

Shinya Tsukamoto's 2018 film Killing is a great, tense story that both plays into and undermines some of the tropes of samurai films. It's a bit brutal at times, and also amusing in that wry way that Tsukamoto is so good at.

Watching through chronologically as you are will give Asteroid City the strongest punch. It's one of my favs of his (and one of his funniest), but it's so deeply in conversation with the rest of his body of work that it would be a lot harder to get on its wavelength without at least a few of them under your belt.