It’s that time of the year, when Criterion cryptically unveils some of the titles that may be coming out in the New Year in the form of wacky scribblings. Last year’s drawing was pretty difficult to decode, and this one has some clues that are pretty obscure, but I’ll give it my best shot. Please note that, always, I’ve consulted CriterionForum for the best possible guesses for many of these.

Three kings: Provided I’m not missing something obvious here (UPDATE: it turns out that I may be missing something obvious, as these could be Kings of the Road, and the number referring to The Road Trilogy. We know that’s coming, so I’ll leave that as an addition to my other guess), this is pretty cut-and-dry; it’s David O. Russell’s Three Kings. This clue is well-timed, now that Russell’s latest film is making many long for a return to his 90s/early 2000s career. This would mark yet another feather in Criterion’s cap as a result of their deal with Warner Bros. As would…

McCabe: That’s obviously Warren Beatty-as-McCabe from Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller pushing the cart. It should be a treat to see Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography in a transfer that doesn’t kinda suck.

Wolf in cart: That appears to be a lone wolf, and the cart itself is apparently taken directly from Lone Wolf and Cub. Wow, three-for-three, I guess this isn’t that hard to decipher after all.

Baby dolls: And here’s the first roadblock. What on earth do these three (is the number significant?) baby dolls represent? Do they show that the drawing is beyond the valley of the dolls? Are they just a hint at Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll? Or, and obviously this is my favorite, are they referencing Soderbergh’s Bubble, which takes place in a factory that manufactures baby dolls? Soderbergh does have the rights to Bubble, although the last time he talked about it, it sounded like he didn’t have any immediate plans for it. I dunno, I’m leaving this clue as Undetermined.

Shiny Saturn: Uhhh… there are only two answers to this clue I’ve encountered that seem particularly likely (I don’t think it’s Saturn 3, somehow). The first is Rene Laloux’s Fantastic Planet and the second is Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. As much as I’d like the second one to be true, there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe it, because the news that Criterion would become a distributor for A24 would be big, and you’d think it would’ve come out in a less obscure fashion (like the Llewyn Davis clue last year). Then again, I can’t think of any other reason why the planet would be Saturn and not literally any other planet. Fuck it, this is Undetermined as well.

Angel on bomb: Obviously, the bomb itself refers to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, which is, to say the least, a reasonably big get for Criterion. Now, the angel hitching a ride, that’s a bit trickier, but I’m betting on it being The Exterminating Angel.

Queen of hearts in car with JFK sticker: Okay, a lot of people have said that the card is for The Manchurian Candidate. Criterion has put clues for films that have already come out in these drawings before (in fact, there’s one coming up a little later), but this isn’t one, because the central card in Candidate is a queen of diamonds. Or maybe it was just a mistake, since you could reasonably make the argument that the queen of hearts being in the Presidential motorcade would be too specific a nod to Candidate for it to be anything else. I dunno, I’m going with Undetermined on the card. On the JFK thing, though, that’s definitely a reference to the documentary Primary (possibly more of Robert Drew’s JFK documentaries as well, and maybe JFK too, but I’m not sure about that one).

New world: It’s a new world, it’s for The New World. Done.

Phoenix: Do I really need to say it? Okay, it’s Phoenix. I said it.

Easy Little Bicycle Thief: Here we have a triple clue for things that have already come out (although technically the individual release promised by one of the clues hasn’t occurred yet). The kid is Jackie Coogan in The Kid, the bike he’s stealing is the Easy Rider bike, and the fact that he’s stealing it means he’s one of the Bicycle Thieves.

Honey: This would refer to Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey, as Richardson has a phantom page on criterion.com.

Clock: It’s chiming at midnight, it’s for Chimes at Midnight.

Chrysanthemums: Those would seem be for the newly-restored and Janus Films-toured The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums. Or maybe it’s for Mikio Naruse’s Late Chrysanthemums. I’ll just leave it as both.

Boxer with saxophone: That would be for Here Comes Mr. Jordan, where the main character is a boxer who tries and fails to play the saxophone.

Whale and the squid: Hey you, out there in cold, getting lonely, getting old, can you get that that’s a clue for Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale?

Naked man on island: That would be Kaneto Shindo’s The Naked Island, although I don’t know if the man himself is just part of the clue or is meant to hint at something else.