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

‘Tis the season to lounge on the couch and consume a box of festive treats in front of a good movie, a bad movie, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

As always, a selection of new holiday movies strives to join part of our seasonal watchlist—perhaps even joining the ranks alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

So, in a helpful attempt to separate the winners from the losers, and to embrace the holiday mood, I marathoned as many fresh Christmas films as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Kicking off, hopefully, on a good foot. This is the sole 2025 movie on a popular review site's list of the best 100 Christmas movies of all time.

The popular band are stuck in the UK after wrapping up their global concert series and must get home for Christmas. Their endeavors are hampered by an villainous Saint Nick, who sings to state they won’t get home until they “rekindle their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is entertaining even for the uninitiated, while followers will certainly catch lots of easter eggs 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 superb for devotees and a solid start to the day.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their loved ones who must sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland appears as a movie actor cast a "panto".

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and older lead Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose representative has misled him into thinking he’s starring in prestigious English theatre.

His pantomime fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. It's easy to predict their reply. Except if you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some hilarious moments, some touching storylines, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit tacky at any other time of year, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Morning: Christmas Karma

An actor appears at the beginning of this film, too, insulting someone for the next movie straight. Might this become a fresh holiday staple?

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

Mr Sood is played by The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the filmmaker behind Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative develops as the miserly Mr Sood is visited by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least different from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s portrayal is flat—a problem when he’s so the main character.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

There’s time for a major broadcaster's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a endearingly grumpy man who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he receives an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) persuades him splurging the cash 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 figure out how to pay back the difference.

Enjoyable but forgettable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the setting—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels cosy and festive all the same.

Driven corporate star Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a vineyard to secure an acquisition for a sparkling wine company. En route, she meets a fellow in a bookshop who promises to show her Christmas in Paris.

A critic recently stated this is the finest new Christmas film of the past few years. That’s a bit of a exaggeration, but it is a holiday love story with a touch of class and gives the required cozy feelings.

The scene with a detailed conversation about Die Hard is very good too.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Sixteen-year-old Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, regardless of the persuasion 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 guidance of a team of well-known scientists and personalities.

It’s understated but charming, and ideal viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

A Star-Studded Family Drama

Michelle Pfeiffer is the head of a bickering American family who reunite for the holidays—including other Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping 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 unsung heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s the premise, but in execution it’s really a jumble of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last finds her strength.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Formulaic Fun

The day’s taken a dip, but fortunately here’s a new offering in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—holiday fare.

It’s a tale as well-worn: An American woman journeys to a picturesque cold country and ends up finding romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher