As in other years, 2017 seemed to get off to a slow start at the movies. Then came the Harvey Weinstein scandal — and collateral damage — blew everything up. Off screen, at least. Would Hollywood survive?

Film fests started unleashing a long list of great flicks, including some stunning directorial debuts, by the likes of mumblecore graduate Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), one half of riotous comedy duo Key & Peele, and Matt Spicer (“Ingrid Goes West”).

Veteran directors were in the mix, too, with Ridley Scott giving us “Blade Runner 2049” and end-of-year gem “All the Money in the World,” and the revered Agnes Varda offering “Faces Places.”

And the horror genre continued to be home to some of our most gifted filmmakers, including Guillermo del Toro, with his brilliant hybrid film “The Shape of Water,”; Yorgos Lanthimos, with the decidedly odd “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”; Trey Shults‘ post-apocalyptic psychological terror drama “It Comes at Night”; and Nacho Vigalondo‘s “Colossal.”

Along the way came a boatload of worthwhile film fare. Without further ado, my Top 10 (descriptions mostly culled from my Twitter feed @screenviews):

1. The Shape of Water — Nobody makes transportive movie magic quite like Guillermo del Toro, whose latest stunning cinematic feat is a horror/sci-fi/fantasy hybrid centered on a romance between a mute woman and a brawny sea creature. It lives, thrillingly.
2. The Big Sick — Was there a sharper screenplay this year than the one Kumail Nanjiani co-wrote for this surprisingly affecting cross-cultural comic drama? Nanjiani is a riot as a version of himself, and Holly Hunter and Ray Romano are in peak form.
3. Get Out — It’s a thriller, it’s a comedy, it’s a horror show. Jordan Peele’s shocker is all three, but it’s also deeply unsettling social commentary, built on Daniel Kaluuya‘s sharp turn as a black man uncovering a freaky secret about his white girlfriend’s family.
4. Lady Bird — Remember, as a teenager, knowing everything until  you didn’t? Saoirse Ronan is dead-on as high schooler Christine, bright but bored, alive with creative energy but given to bouts of angst in Greta Gerwig’s smart, funny directorial debut.
5. Good Time — A gritty, ’70s-flick vibe informs the Safdies’ exhilarating story of a sleazy bank robber (Robert Pattinson) and his zigzagging, dangerously misguided efforts to free his mentally handicapped brother  (Benny Safdie) from prison.
6. The Disaster Artist — Sorry, “Room” is bad-bad (not bad-good), but James Franco‘s tale of mysterious weirdo Tommy Wiseau’s folly is the gift that keeps giving, an often riotously funny comedy that also, surprisingly, taps into a certain poignancy. James & brother Dave Franco kill.
7. Dunkirk — Chris Nolan goes to war, and brings home an epic movie-movie spectacle, often silent, that places the viewer deep in the heart of air, land and sea action during the titular WWII rescue operation. Brilliant companion to “The Darkest Hour.”
8. The Florida Project — It looks and feels like a partly improvised documentary told from the POV of little kids, but Sean Baker‘s veering rhythms take hold, and the oversaturated colors contrast with a tale of poverty in the shadows of Disney World.
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — Frances McDormand‘s fearless, edgy performance as the would-be avenging mom is the showpiece. But filmmaker Martin McDonagh peoples his off-kilter comic drama with fascinatingly damaged small-town characters, played by Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson, among others.
10. Baby Driver — Summer’s biggest cineplex blast is one of the year’s highest-octane, most stylish film trips, a heist movie that really moves. In Edgar Wright‘s hands, getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) moves like a ballet dancer to incendiary pop/rock tracks.

Also notable, in no particular order: I, Tonya; Ingrid Goes West; Blade Runner 2049; All the Money in the World; It Comes at Night; The Killing of a Sacred Deer; A Ghost Story; The Post; War for the Planet of the Apes; Logan Lucky; The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected); Darkest Hour; Detroit; Colossal; Loving Vincent; The Post; and documentaries Jane and I Called Him Morgan.  

My favorite films of the year (in alphabetical order):

Birdman

Boyhood

Force Majeure

Foxcatcher

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Interstellar

Life Itself

A Most Violent Year

Snowpiercer

Whiplash

Others I liked: Still Alice, Wild, CitizenFour, Inherent Vice, Nightcrawler, The One I Love, Under the Skin, American Sniper, Unbroken, Ida, Keep On Keepin’ On, The Skeleton Twins

Stars Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Daniella Kertesz, Matthew Fox, David Morse, Fana Mokoena. Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof, and J. Michael Straczynski; adapted from the Max Brooks book. 115 minutes. Rated PG-13. Critic’s grade: B

Click, click, click go the choppers. Run, run, run, goes the movie star.

That’s about the extent of what happens in “World War Z,” the highly anticipated mega-budget ($250 million) adaptation of Max Brooks‘ clever “oral history” of a zombie apocalypse that very nearly wiped out the human race.

Rather than relate the dozens of individual stories of mayhem and heroism presented in the book, director Marc Forster (“Quantum of Solace,” “Finding Neverland,” “Monster’s Ball”) focuses on one man’s story. It’s all Brad Pitt, all the time, as Gerry Lane, a retired United Nations investigator — or something — is called back into action to travel the globe in search of a cure for what ails the freshly undead. In the film, the UN is positioned as the agency most capable of saving the planet; in real life, the organization is, like, the P.T.A.

Forster’s film, credited to four screenwriters, is kind of a combo horror flick, scientific-discovery mystery and international thriller, as Gerry’s travels take him from Philadelphia to South Korea to Jerusalem to Wales and finally to a refugee camp in Nova Scotia.

In this version, a zombie bite leads to a convulsing, eyes-bugging transformation into zombiedom in just a few minutes flat. As in Danny Boyle‘s “28 Days Later” and its sequel, but not in television’s “The Walking Dead” or in the George A. Romero films, these flesh eaters are fast, scary fast.

Both of those characteristics are fully displayed near the start of “World War Z,” as Gerry, his wife (Mireille Enos) and their two girls drive through Philadelphia, off to run errands after a warm and fuzzy prelude at a comfortable home in a leafy suburb. First, they’re ensnared in a traffic jam, then motorcyle cops and others start fleeing from some distant trouble spot; the flow of human traffic and suggestions of a terrible urban disaster will remind some of the streets of Manhattan, during the 9/11 terror attacks.

This time, though, the enemy is us, or, rather, a version of us as infected by a disease that turns humans into teeming masses of nasty looking people looking to satisfy their chomping urges as soon and as often as possible. The snippets of news clips during the opening credits hint at what’s to come, with the animal kingdom askew, CO2 emissions rising fast, and routine nature images — ants swarming, birds flocking — coming off as ominous. “Mother nature is a serial killer,” one scientist type says later.

A quick flight, a melee at a Newark, N.J., grocery store and a helicopter rescue later, and Gerry and Co. are on an aircraft carrier, where mom, the kids and a tag-along child will reside while dad is on his mission to save the world.

Technically, “World War Z” isn’t really frightening, and it’s hardly gory at all — far more blood and guts are spilled in “The Walking Dead” and in the terrific new BBC zombie series “In the Flesh.”

And, while there is one scene of apocalyptic, zombie-caused destruction in Jerusalem — historically, end-of-days scenarios play out in the Middle East —  Forster’s film doesn’t dwell on an endless series of scenes of large-scale devastation and stuff blowing up. That’s a positive, I think.

Instead, he downsizes and, in some respects, personalizes, the horror, with several sequences that are darn suspenseful, including that early rooftop escape, a mad dash from a military base to a cargo plane, an unexpected zombie attack on a moving airliner, and, in particular, a surprise getaway inside a World Health Organization lab teeming with the nasties.

Does Gerry discover a long-lasting solution to the zombie problem? No spoilers here.

But, if “World War Z” somehow manages to recoup its sky-high budget, real answers may reside in follow-up films: “This isn’t the end, not even close,” we hear in a voiceover. “Our war has just begun.”

He’s back, as buff as ever and ready to re-start the franchise. “Man of Steel,” Zack Snyder’s retelling of the Superman origins story, spends time on Krypton — with Russell Crowe as dad Jor-El, and Michael Shannon as General Zod — as well as on earth, where Kevin Costner plays the father of Clark Kent (Henry Cavill). Clark is a reluctant superhero in the making, keeping his powers a secret until a crisis situations pushes his talents into the spotlight. There, he becomes an objection of attention, and attraction, for intrepid Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams). Snyder puts a clean cape on the legend, with impressive results. Rated PG-13.

Also opening:

What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Not much, which is why there’s so little of said stuff in the often outrageously funny and occasionally edgy “This is the End,” with a roomful of right-now funny guys playing versions of themselves — James Franco, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride. It’s the end of the world, a la the predictions told in Revelations, and these profane bad boys and one woman, Emma Watson, are gathered at the home of pal Jay Baruchel. The film, written and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is decidedly not for family viewing. Rated R.

“Before Midnight,” the third — and last? — film based on the forward American guy (Ethan Hawke) and smart French girl (Julie Delpy) who met so memorably in “Before Sunrise” (1995), and reconnected in “Before Sunset” (2004). This time out, Jesse and Celine, married with young twin girls, are vacationing in Greece, and talking — nonstop — as if their very marriage depended on it. It does, probably. Filmmaker Richard Linklater‘s characters, in a script co-written by the director and his co-stars, aren’t nearly as charming and lovable as they were the first couple of times around; in all likelihood, neither are you and your significant other. Rated R.

With “Stories We Tell,” filmmaker and actor Sarah Polley (“Away From Her,” “Take This Waltz”) goes on a journey of self-discovery, teasing out long-held family secrets and bracing for tough truths. It’s a compelling, unusually frank documentary, with an intensely personal kick, sometimes troubling, sometimes poignant. Rated PG-13.

“I got a job,” one young striver says at the end of “The Internship,” a middling, often muddling comedy that would more honestly be called “The Wonderful World of Google.”

And so that’s what things have come to, in this age of American Recession, circa midway through Obama’s second term: Forget saving the world (unless you’re a superhero), or curing cancer. The thing most worth striving for is getting a job, and with it all the stuff dreams are made of — a decent income, a reliable paycheck, healthcare coverage, smart co-workers, and maybe some nice perks.

In this case, the perk is the work environment. It’s not your father’s, or mother’s, or friend’s, or family member’s, office, unless they also happen to work at Google. Sure, the young, go-getting employees of Google may be workaholics in training, but, oh, what a glorious workplace/space it is. The walls and furniture are brightly multicolored, as are the bicycles you can hop on to get around the sprawling campus. Meals and all-day refreshments are always free, long circular slides provide alternate methods of traveling from floor to floor, and overtired employees can take advantage of nap chairs.

Let’s not forget that a plot is buried somewhere in there, deep within the wide open spaces of a two-hour ad for the wonders of a stunningly successful Internet company.

Slacker-stoner type Owen Wilson and motormouth hyper guy Vince Vaughn, who teamed up to resounding commercial success nearly a decade ago in “Wedding Crashers,” play a pair of successful watch salesmen, suddenly and unexpectedly out of work when their boss (John Goodman) shuts down a business that’s starting to tank. Wrist watches suffering in popularity? Who knew?

Naturally, the two 40-somethings — somehow, ancient geezers as viewed through the lens of this script — apply for unpaid internships at Google headquarters near San Francisco. Naturally, they’re accepted into a program designed to attract the best and  brightest young people from around the world.

Once a viewer gets past the absurd initial premise, it’s easy enough to be entertained by the general concept, a kind of war of the generations, as the two older guys are forced to adjust to a world where their rivals are natural born Digital Age workers. Billy (Vaughn) is so much of a dinosaur that he talks about going “on the line” rather than “online.” Seriously?

Billy and pal Nick (Wilson) wind up together on an internship team with other misfits. The challenge: beat the other teams in a series of challenges, some related to the type of work conducted at Google, and some related to sheer teamwork. A bad guy (Max Minghella) from another team, a would-be intellectual with a British accent, is determined to embarrass Billy and Nick.

Sad, but true: the weak-ish concept devolves into another one of those stories where zeros become heroes, geeks become champions, and there are enough lessons to go around for everyone. Also, there’s time for the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Nick and a beautiful, hard-working Google employee played by Rose Byrne. Will Ferrell shows up on a predictably overt-the-top Will Ferrell type of cameo, as a lusty mattress salesman.

Call it too little of a good thing, and too much of a predictable plot. Oh, and Google uber all.