Binge-Watching This Year's Holiday Movies: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and consume a box of festive treats in front of a good movie, a awful feature, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

As always, a selection of new Christmas films strives to join part of our holiday traditions—perhaps even joining the ranks alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

So, in a helpful attempt to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the Christmas spirit, I marathoned as many new festive movies as possible in a single day.

7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Beginning, hopefully, on a good foot. This release is the only 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the top 100 Christmas movies of all time.

The popular band find themselves stranded in the UK after wrapping up their global concert series and must make it back for Christmas. Their efforts are thwarted by an malevolent Father Christmas, who sings to declare they won’t get home until they “rediscover their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is amusing even for the casual viewer, while followers will certainly pick up on lots of easter eggs as they endeavor to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is great for fans and a solid start to the day.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their loved ones who are obliged to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a celebrity cast a traditional British stage show.

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and aging action hero Brad Mack, who has hit a rough patch and whose manager has misled him into thinking he’s performing in renowned British drama.

His pantomime cast-mates inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. It's easy to predict their reply. Except if you’re not acquainted with traditional stage call-and-response.

There are some hilarious moments, some heartwarming sub-plots, and the supporting actors is brilliant, too.

It’s the type of film that would be a bit tacky at a different time, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Morning: Christmas Karma

A familiar face appears at the start of this film, too, insulting someone for the second consecutive movie. Is this a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who collects Mr Sood, the newest interpretation on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by an actor from Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the filmmaker behind Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story progresses as the miserly Mr Sood is haunted by the apparitions of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This cultural adaptation is at least unique from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s acting is flat—a significant issue when he’s so the main character.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

There’s time for a network's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a endearingly grumpy man who “avoids Christmas.”

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

There’s just one snag—he discovers there was an mistake with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to determine how to return the difference.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

This is one of those holiday movies where the festive trappings are in the background—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

High-powered businesswoman Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is sent to a French chateau to secure an acquisition for a sparkling wine company. On the way, she encounters a fellow in a book store who vows to show her a festive Paris.

An expert recently claimed this is the finest new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it is a Christmas romance with a touch of class and gives the required warm and fuzzy feels.

The scene with a lengthy discussion about Die Hard is particularly strong too.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Teenage Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, in spite of the attempts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

The answer is to be discovered, and Chris ventures forth to find it with the guidance of a panel of well-known figures.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

A Star-Studded Family Drama

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother of a dysfunctional American family who gather for the holidays—including fellow Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer starts by mentioning holiday staples 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 jumble of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character finally comes into her own.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s taken a dip, but fortunately here’s a new addition in the saturated market of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—festive fodder.

It’s a narrative as well-worn: An American woman goes on a quest to a far-off wintery locale and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher