Ratcatcher (1999) was the debut feature of UK class of '95 film grad Lynne Ramsay, and one that immediately distinguished her as a force to be reckoned with. the film, framed in Glasgow during a garbagemens strike in 1973, is that of James, a troubled boy played by 12-year-old William Eadie, a non-professional whom Ramsay is said to have cast after auditioning over 1,000 other hopefuls. Ramsay's own training (first as a photographer) imparts a rich visual style to the film, but it is her honest, subtle - and no less intuitive - attention to it's various characters that makes the film shine, as she and Eades slip across a canvas that is slow and painful poetry to behold. for these reasons the film is one of my very favorites, and smarts like a skinned, bleeding shin.