Binge-Watching 2025's Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and demolish a packet of festive treats in front of a great film, a poor film, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

As always, a selection of new seasonal stories aims to become part of our seasonal watchlist—perhaps even finding a spot 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 get into the Christmas spirit, I watched as many fresh Christmas films as possible in a single day.

7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Beginning, ideally, on a positive note. This release is the exclusive 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the greatest 100 Christmas movies of all time.

The Jonas Brothers end up trapped in the UK after concluding their global concert series and must get home for Christmas. Their attempts are hindered by an evil Santa, who breaks into song to state they won’t get home until they “find their brotherly magic.”

The banter between the arguing trio is entertaining even for the non-fan, while fans will undoubtedly pick up on lots of easter eggs as they try to get back using any means of transport necessary.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who are obliged to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor roped into a "panto".

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “temperamental” and aging star Brad Mack, who has hit a rough patch and whose representative has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in prestigious English theatre.

His pantomime cast-mates tell him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. One can imagine their reply. Unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some great jokes, some cockle-warming storylines, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

A familiar face appears at the start of this film, too, calling someone a mug for the next movie straight. Could this be a fresh holiday staple?

This time, he’s a musical taxi operator 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 director of Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative unfolds as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is visited 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 unfortunately he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s acting is wooden—a major flaw when he’s so central to everything.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

There's just enough time for a network's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an large festive windfall at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) persuades him spending the sum on a vacation to Lapland.

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

Enjoyable but forgettable.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those Christmas films where the tree, fairy lights and snow are in the background—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its main point—but it feels comfortable and seasonal all the same.

High-powered businesswoman Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is assigned to a French chateau to secure an acquisition for a sparkling wine company. During her travels, she runs into a guy in a literary haven who offers to show her Christmas in Paris.

An expert recently stated this is the top new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it is a festive dalliance with a dash of elegance and gives the required warm and fuzzy feels.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

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

The answer is somewhere, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the expert help of a panel of well-known experts and celebrities.

It’s understated but endearing, and good viewing while waiting for Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the matriarch of a bickering 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 Christmas classics like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before stating: “They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s what this is, but in execution it’s really a mash-up of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character eventually takes center stage.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s waned in quality, but happily here’s a new addition in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and strangely compelling—seasonal comfort food.

It’s a story as familiar as can be: An American woman travels to a picturesque cold country and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher