From aliens cruising Glasgow to punks rocking Belfast, most regions of the UK have had their big-screen moment. Our critics take us on a tour of some of their favourite locationsScotland

Beats (2019)
Livingston, 1994, and just as the Criminal Justice act is about to end the illegal rave era, two young friends set off to have a mad one. Brian Welsh’s rhapsody to rave reminds us of that important part of British youth culture we left somewhere in a field in West Lothian. Ellen E Jones

My Childhood (1972)
Based on director Bill Douglas’s own wartime childhood, this was made in the Scottish mining village of Newcraighall, where PoWs were confined. One shot shows Newcraighall Colliery, known as Klondyke, which closed in the 1960s. Peter Bradshaw

Ratcatcher (1999)
The great Lynne Ramsay made her first feature with a Scottish reverie, set in the Glasgow of 1973 (and, briefly, on the moon). The result is filled with brilliant, mournful poetry, a boy’s life captured amid creaking tenements and the Forth and Clyde Canal. Danny Leigh

Trainspotting (1996)
The film’s “choose life” scene in which Mark Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, shoplifts and sprints away down the pavement, takes place on Princes Street in Edinburgh. PB

Under the Skin (2013)
To watch Jonathan Glazer’s modern classic is to see Glasgow through new eyes. The gaze belongs to a predatory alien played by Scarlett Johansson; we come to share her experience of Trongate, Celtic Park and the unnerving hum of the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre. DL

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