2024 winter movie preview: Our top 10 includes the ‘Mean Girls’ musical, a new ‘Dune’ and a Bob Marley biopic

Coming off the holiday season, what do we want from our midwinter movies? Anything with snowstorms? (Yes!) Big blasts of sequel escapism? (Well, maybe.) The new film from the fiendish auteur behind “Parasite”? The fourth entry in the “Spider-Man” cinematic universe?

Any reliable predictions of quality regarding the next three months of moviegoing are such stuff as dreams, and nervous, well-compensated industry executives, are made on. My role in this annual list of 10 is simplicity itself. Based on a time-tested combination of hope, guesswork and trailers, it’s time to roll the dice and hope for a few surprises — if not in originality, then in execution, and in the spirit of teaching old brand names a few new tricks.