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

‘Tis the season to relax on the couch and demolish a packet of holiday pastries in front of a terrific flick, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.

This year, a batch of latest Christmas films hopes to be part of our festive viewing—maybe even earning a place alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

So, in a helpful attempt to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to embrace the holiday mood, I marathoned as many new Christmas films as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Kicking off, ideally, on a good foot. This film is the only 2025 entry on a well-known aggregator's list of the best 100 holiday films of all time.

The popular band are trapped in the UK after wrapping up their international trek and must return for Christmas. Their attempts are thwarted by an villainous Saint Nick, who breaks into song to declare they won’t get home until they “rediscover their brotherly magic.”

The banter between the bickering brothers is enjoyable even for the uninitiated, while followers will certainly pick up on lots of easter eggs as they attempt to get back using all transportation available.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

It’s not legendary, but is superb for devotees and a good start to the day.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 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 celebrity roped into a "panto".

“A what's a panto??” asks Sutherland’s “difficult” and aging action hero Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose representative has deceived him into thinking he’s appearing in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin cast-mates inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he insists angrily. One can imagine their retort. Except if you’re ignorant of traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some great jokes, some touching sub-plots, and the rest of the cast is excellent, too.

It’s the kind of movie that would be a bit cheesy at any other time of year, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

An actor appears at the beginning of this film, too, insulting someone for the next movie straight. Could this be a budding festive ritual?

This time, he’s a crooning chauffeur who picks up 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 filmmaker behind Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story progresses as the miserly Mr Sood is confronted by the apparitions of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least unique from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s acting is wooden—a significant issue when he’s so the focal point.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

Before lunch for a channel's holiday special—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an large festive windfall at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) talks him into spending the sum on a holiday 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 pay back the excess.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

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 core purpose—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

High-powered businesswoman Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is assigned to a country estate to negotiate a purchase for a sparkling wine company. En route, she encounters a man in a literary haven who vows to show her a festive Paris.

A commentator recently stated this is the top new Christmas film of the past few years. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it is a festive dalliance with a touch of class and gives the necessary cozy feelings.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

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

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

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

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

Pfeiffer begins by referencing Christmas classics like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before declaring: “They need to make a movie about the real champions of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s the premise, but in reality it’s really a combination of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last takes center stage.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Evening: A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s taken a dip, but happily here’s a new entry in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and strangely compelling—festive fodder.

It’s a narrative as familiar as can be: An American woman journeys to a distant snowy land and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher