Marathon Viewing 2025's Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

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

Once again, a batch of latest holiday movies aims to become part of our festive viewing—perhaps even earning a place alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

Therefore, in a noble effort to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the festive feeling, I binged as many fresh Christmas films as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Starting, hopefully, on a high. This is the sole 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the best 100 festive features of all time.

The musical trio find themselves trapped in the UK after finishing their international trek and must get home for Christmas. Their efforts are thwarted by an villainous Saint Nick, who breaks into song to declare they won’t get home until they “rediscover their familial spark.”

The repartee between the arguing trio is entertaining even for the casual viewer, while followers will no doubt notice lots of references as they attempt to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their family members who will have to sit through it.

Late Morning: Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor cast a pantomime.

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “difficult” and aging lead Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose representative has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in prestigious English theatre.

His Aladdin cast-mates let him know he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. One can imagine their reply. That is, unless you’re not acquainted with traditional British theatre traditions.

There are some hilarious moments, some heartwarming storylines, and the supporting actors is excellent, too.

It’s the type of film that would be a bit cheesy at another season, but is a great entertainment at Christmas.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

A familiar face appears at the start of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the next movie straight. Might this become a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a crooning chauffeur who collects Mr Sood, the modern take 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 familiar story develops as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This Indian Scrooge 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 focal point.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

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

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

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

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the decorations and snow are in the setting—Christmas is the environment of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels cosy and festive all the same.

High-powered businesswoman Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a country estate to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. On the way, she meets a fellow in a bookshop who promises to show her a festive Paris.

A critic recently stated this is the top new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it is a Christmas romance with a hint of sophistication and gives the necessary cozy feelings.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

A Charming Quest

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

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

It’s gentle but endearing, and good viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

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

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping 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 reality it’s really a mash-up of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character finally takes center stage.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s taken a dip, but thankfully here’s a new offering in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and highly entertaining—seasonal comfort food.

It’s a story as well-worn: An American woman journeys to a distant snowy land and ends up discovering romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher