Binge-Watching This Year's Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to lounge on the couch and devour a box of festive treats in front of a good movie, a awful feature, or one that’s awesomely awful.

This year, a selection of fresh holiday movies strives to join part of our seasonal watchlist—perhaps even finding a spot alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

So, in a noble effort to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to find the Christmas spirit, I watched as many recent Christmas films as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Beginning, optimistically, on a high. This is the exclusive 2025 movie on a famous website's list of the best 100 Christmas movies of all time.

The popular band are trapped in the UK after concluding their international trek and must make it back for Christmas. Their efforts are hampered by an evil Santa, who breaks into song to announce they won’t get home until they “find their familial spark.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is entertaining even for the casual viewer, while devotees will no doubt catch lots of references as they endeavor to get back using all transportation available.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

It’s not an all-time classic, but is great for devotees and a solid start to the day.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their family members who will have to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor cast a traditional British stage show.

“A what's a panto??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and ageing lead Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose manager has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in renowned British drama.

His pantomime fellow actors tell him he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he insists angrily. One can imagine their retort. That is, unless you’re ignorant of traditional British theatre traditions.

There are some great jokes, some heartwarming storylines, and the supporting actors is excellent, too.

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit cheesy at any other time of year, but is a great entertainment at Christmas.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

A familiar face shows up at the beginning of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the next movie straight. Is this a fresh holiday staple?

This time, he’s a crooning chauffeur who encounters Mr Sood, the latest spin on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by a star of Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the director of Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative progresses as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is confronted by the ghosts of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This Indian Scrooge is at least distinct from all the others, but unfortunately he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s performance is flat—a major flaw when he’s so the main character.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

Before lunch for a channel's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he gets an sizable holiday payout at work, his wife (starring Morgana Robinson) persuades him spending the sum on a vacation to Lapland.

There’s just one issue—he learns there was an error with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to devise a plan for how to reimburse the excess.

Enjoyable but forgettable.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

This is one of those Christmas films where the tree, fairy lights and snow are in the backdrop—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

Driven corporate star Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is sent to a French chateau to negotiate a purchase for a champagne business. En route, she meets a guy in a book store who promises to show her Christmas in Paris.

A commentator recently claimed this is the best new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a festive dalliance with a touch of class and gives the obligatory heartwarming sensation.

The scene with a extended debate about Die Hard is notable too.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

A Charming Quest

Sixteen-year-old Chris, played by Lenny Rush, continues to believe in Father Christmas, in spite of the attempts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.

The secret is somewhere, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the assistance of a team of well-known figures.

It’s gentle but endearing, and ideal viewing while waiting for Santa to visit.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother of a dysfunctional American family who come back together for the holidays—including other acclaimed actress Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer starts by mentioning classic festive films like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before saying: “They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s what this is, but in practice it’s really a combination of those inspirations, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last takes center stage.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Formulaic Fun

The day’s taken a dip, but happily here’s a new offering in the saturated market of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and strangely compelling—holiday fare.

It’s a story as well-worn: An American woman goes on a quest to a picturesque cold country and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher