This was written by someone who hasn't seriously engaged in reading novels lol
Novels have been doing this sort of thing on a pretty deep level since basically their inception, and in more modern contexts no movie could replicate something like Pale Fire or Gravity's Rainbow for example. Self-referentiality is also a pretty boring trick after awhile, self-awareness and referentiality are very juvenile creative traits that often (not always) are seeking some sort of pat on the back for the mere act of referentiality itself.
These things should be starting points, not the focus of an entire work unless there's a broader point to be made. Fredric Jameson has written a great deal about this sort of thing, it's basically the default position of culture in a lot of ways now, there's nothing inherently exciting about it.
This isn't to say one medium is superior to the other or anything, I just find it to be a very weird critique of "mere" novels when self-referentiality goes way deeper there, the only things I can really think of that come close are 8 1/2 or maybe some of Charlie Kaufman's work like Adaptation.
I think this also simultaneously highlights the genius of someone like Felini with 8 1/2, referentiality done right to actually get at deeper themes/characterization, not just for the sake of referentiality itself.