20 non-traditional Christmas movies to watch this year

16. In Bruges

Watch if: You’re itching to go on a European vacation. Or if the Samuel L. Jackson-John Travolta scenes were your favorite part of Pulp Fiction.

What it’s about: Two hitmen are sent to Bruges, Belgium after an assignment goes wrong. The jolly Ken (Brendan Gleeson) is charmed by the picturesque tourist town. The sarcastic, put-upon Ray (Colin Farrell) is not.

Connection to Christmas: Subtle, but unmistakable. The duo arrives in Bruges during the holiday season. The already-gorgeous city is chock-full of twinkling lights and Christmas trees. To paraphrase Ken and Ray’s emotionally unstable boss (Ralph Fiennes), Bruges truly does look like it’s straight from a fairytale.

Why it makes for good holiday entertainment: As much as traditional Christmas movies would have us think otherwise, real life does not pause Dec. 1 and resume Jan. 2. In fact, Christmas tends to exacerbate whatever conflicts we’ve been dealing with throughout the year — those relating to work, relationships, general dissatisfaction, etc.

This dawns on Ken and especially Ray once they settle in Bruges. They might be having an objectively amazing holiday in a town that may as well be inside a snow globe, but they still have to reckon with what they do for a living, who they work for, and who they are. Ray still accidentally killed a young boy during an assignment. Ken still has “killed people. Not many people. And most of them were not very nice people. Apart from one person.” Nothing will change that, not even Christmas. Or the swans.