Marathon Viewing 2025's Festive Features: The Hits, The Misses, and The Guilty Pleasures.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and devour a box of festive treats in front of a great film, a bad movie, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.

As always, a crop of latest seasonal stories hopes to be part of our holiday traditions—potentially 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 distinguish the gems from the coal, and to find the festive feeling, I binged as many new holiday releases as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

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

The musical trio end up stuck in the UK after wrapping up their international trek and must return for Christmas. Their endeavors are hindered by an villainous Saint Nick, who sings to declare they won’t get home until they “find their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is amusing even for the casual viewer, while fans will no doubt pick up on lots of easter eggs as they endeavor to get back using any means of transport necessary.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

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

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

Next: A Star in Panto

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland stars as a celebrity cast a "panto".

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and aging lead Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose manager has tricked him into thinking he’s performing in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. One can imagine their response. Unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some very funny lines, some heartwarming sub-plots, and the ensemble is excellent, 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.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

A familiar face shows up at the outset of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the next movie straight. Might this become a fresh holiday staple?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who encounters 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 Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story progresses as the stingy Mr Sood is haunted by the spirits of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, 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 acting is flat—a problem when he’s so the main character.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

There's just enough time for a major broadcaster's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “avoids Christmas.”

But after he receives an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) convinces him splurging the cash on a holiday to Lapland.

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

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

This is one of those holiday movies where the decorations and snow are in the backdrop—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its core purpose—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a vineyard to negotiate a purchase for a champagne business. On the way, she runs into a guy in a bookshop who promises to show her Christmas in Paris.

A critic recently declared this is the finest new Christmas film of the recent era. 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 extended debate about Die Hard is notable too.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Teenage 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 truth is out there, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the expert help of a team of well-known scientists and personalities.

It’s low-key but endearing, and good viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

A Star-Studded Family Drama

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 begins by referencing 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 real champions of the holidays—moms.”

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s taken a dip, but thankfully here’s a new entry in the packed genre of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and utterly watchable—seasonal comfort food.

It’s a narrative as old as time: An American woman travels to a distant snowy land and ends up discovering romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher