The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Ronald Neame, 1969

Muriel Spark's celebrated 1961 novella was, until Trainspotting, Edinburgh's most readily identifiable contribution to modern literature. Inspired largely by Spark's own time at [James] Gillespie's school, this elaborate, empathetic satire on a fascism-admiring teacher would not have been expected to be a major candidate for Oscar attention, but Maggie Smith won the best actress award in 1969, after Ronald "Poseidon Adventure" Neame directed the film version. Sixties Edinburgh has no problem standing in for 30s Edinburgh: the Marcia Blaine school is sited in the Edinburgh Academy building in Henderson Row, while it's possible to stand in the exact same spot as Maggie Smith on the Grassmarket and bellow: "Observe, little girls, the castle!", shortly before decamping to Greyfriars Kirkyard.

• Henderson Row, Grassmarket, Edinburgh Castle, Barnbougle Castle

Trainspotting, Danny Boyle, 1996

The opening scenes of Trainspotting, in which Ewan McGregor and Ewen Bremner pound along Princes Street to the sound of Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, have rightly gone down as among the most iconic in British cinema. And you couldn't get more Edinburgh either, as Renton and Spud slither down Waterloo Place, right by the station. In actual fact, much of Irvine Welsh's high-octane ode to the Edinburgh junk life was filmed in Glasgow, including the Begbie pub fight scene and the Volcano club. But no film has done more to put Edinburgh on the map in the modern era.

• Princes Street, Waterloo Place, Leith Street

Chariots of Fire, Hugh Hudson, 1981

Being as it is about the feats of two British athletes at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, Chariots of Fire is not always high on the list of great Edinburgh movies, but as one of the athletes concerned is Scottish flier Eric Liddell, the city becomes a quiet character in its own right. Primarily, it stands for the don't-mess-with-me spirit of the Christian faith that sustains Liddell – causing him to knock back as august a person as the future Edward VIII. The Edinburgh skyline, as seen from Arthur's Seat, gets a good workout, but my favourite bit is Liddell tipping his cap to the statue of John Knox, located in the courtyard of the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall, just off the Mound.

• Arthur's Seat, Princes Street, The Mound, Broughton Place, Holyrood Park

Regeneration, Gillies MacKinnon, 1997

A real change of pace this: Pat Barker's intense, subtle novel about war-damaged soldiers receiving treatment at the Craiglockhart War Hospital (now part of Napier University) was adapted into a film by Gillies MacKinnon, best-known perhaps for the Glasgow gang film Small Faces. Regeneration wasn't actually shot at Craiglockhart, a suburb in the south-west of the city but mostly at Overtoun House near Dumbarton. Even so, it summons up wonderfully well the spirit of the period, and the atmosphere of civilised inquiry under the stewardship of WHR Rivers as he treats his most famous patient, poet Siegfried Sassoon, after the horrors of the first world war.

Hallam Foe, David Mackenzie, 2007

A weird one-off of a film: Jamie Bell plays a strange young man called Hallam Foe. He is oedipally obsessed with his dead mother (as well as his current stepmother), and crawls over rooftops to spy on a fellow employee and then holes up in a clocktower with bird's eye views of the city. The clocktower is the one belonging to the Balmoral Hotel, an utterly distinctive neo-gothic pile only a few yards away from the Scott monument. Director David Mackenzie had previously examined the underbelly of Glasgow and its canal system in Young Adam. Perhaps not as successful as his former movie, Hallam Foe, especially its hotel-worker scenes, presents a distinctive and different perspective on city life.

• Balmoral Hotel on Princes Street, Scott monument on Princes Street, Cockburn Street

Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle, 1994

Before Trainspotting there was Shallow Grave. With its opening shots tearing along the cobbles of the New Town, before coming to rest outside a front door on North West Circus Place, Shallow Grave oozed Edinburgh; if nothing else, it's got the best flats in Britain. Hence the suitability of its location for this Blood Simple-esque thriller about a dead flatmate and a suitcase full of money – even if Christopher Eccleston's opening voiceover states: "This could be any city." As with Trainspotting, certain key scenes were filmed in Glasgow, such as Ewan McGregor's journalist-office scenes, which took place at the Evening Times in Albion Street.

• North West Circus Place, New Town

The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet, 2010

Working from a never-filmed screenplay by Jacques Tati, Edinburgh-based animator Sylvain Chomet turned this melancholy story of an itinerant magician into a wistful love letter to his adopted home town. Tati had originally planned to film in Czechoslovakia; Chomet, who had made the magnificent Belleville Rendezvous, set it in 1950s Edinburgh, with an anonymous-looking boarding house for hard-up variety artistes the main location. There are, however, wonderful sequences readily identifiable as Edinburgh landmarks: principally, Jenners department store on Princes Street, as well as spectacular views of the Old Town and the Castle.

• Princes Street, Edinburgh Castle, Old Town

Festival, Annie Griffin, 2005

To the rest of the world, the festival is Edinburgh, and it was inevitable, perhaps, that someone would get around to making a film about it … and call it Festival. That someone turned out to be fringe theatre maven Annie Griffin, who did a very nice job of pulling together disparate story strands to make sense of the festival's sprawl. As you'd expect, the packed streets make for a natural film set, and right from the opening credits, Griffin takes up the opportunity. You want scenes of actor types handing out leaflets on the High Street and the Mound? They're all here.

• Royal Mile, High Street, Old Town, Princes Street, The Mound, George Square gardens, Abercromby Place

Burke and Hare, John Landis, 2010

If there's one thing historical Edinburgh stands for, it's corpse-stealing. The Burke and Hare murders, in 1827 and 1828, have imprinted themselves on the popular imagination, and resulted in a string of movie adaptations. The most recent, and probably best known, is the one starring Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis; the reviews may not have been all that great, but director John Landis strains every sinew to summon up early 19th-century Edinburgh – physically at least. There's the obligatory scene set in Greyfriars Kirkyard – rather obviously not the real place – but there's a pretty funny gag about the dog to make up for it.

• Royal Mile, Old Fish Market Close, University of Edinburgh Anatomy Museum, Heriot Place

One Day, Lone Scherfig, 2011

Any modern movie tour of Edinburgh would have to take in the adaptation of David Nicholls' bestselling romantic novel. Though most of it doesn't take place in the city, two key sequences do: the beginning and the end. As graduating Edinburgh university students, Dexter and Emma skulk around, in their gowns, in what looks like the quadrangle of Old College (though as a former student of the university, I never had to wear a mortarboard hat); the pair (played by Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway) then kiss in the street in Stockbridge. In the finale, there's a trip up that old Edinburgh-movie staple, Arthur's Seat (see Chariots) for a flashback to the pair's morning-after the night before moment.

• Arthur's Seat, Cockburn Street/Warriston Close, Moray Place/Forres St, Parliament Square, Calton Hill

• Andrew Pulver is film editor of the Guardian