Marathon Viewing The Latest Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to relax on the couch and consume 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 seasonal watchlist—potentially even joining the ranks alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

Therefore, in a helpful attempt to distinguish the gems from the coal, and to find the festive feeling, I binged as many new festive movies as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Kicking off, optimistically, on a positive note. This is the only 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the greatest 100 holiday films of all time.

The popular band find themselves stranded in the UK after concluding their global concert series and must return for Christmas. Their endeavors are hampered by an malevolent Father Christmas, who sings to declare they won’t get home until they “rekindle their brotherly magic.”

The banter between the squabbling siblings is enjoyable even for the non-fan, while followers will undoubtedly catch lots of in-jokes as they try to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

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

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

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a celebrity cast 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 starring in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin co-stars tell him he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he insists angrily. You can guess their retort. That is, unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.

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

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

Danny Dyer appears at the start of this film, too, calling someone a mug for the second film in a row. Is this a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a musical taxi operator 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 stingy Mr Sood is visited by the ghosts of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This Indian Scrooge is at least unique from all the others, but sadly he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s performance is flat—a problem when he’s so the focal point.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

Before lunch for a major broadcaster's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he receives an large festive windfall at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) persuades him blowing the money on a family trip to Lapland.

There’s just one issue—he discovers there was an error with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to figure out how to pay back the remainder.

Fun while it lasts but not lasting.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

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

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is assigned to a country estate to negotiate a purchase for a champagne business. During her travels, she meets a fellow in a literary haven who promises to show her the holidays in the City of Light.

A commentator recently claimed this is the best new Christmas film of the past few years. That’s a bit of a exaggeration, but it is a holiday love story with a hint of sophistication and gives the obligatory heartwarming sensation.

The scene with a extended debate about Die Hard is very good too.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

Sixteen-year-old Chris, played by Lenny Rush, continues to believe in Father Christmas, despite the efforts of his dad (starring 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 team of well-known scientists and personalities.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the head of a dysfunctional 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 classic festive films like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before declaring: “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 combination of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last comes into her own.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Formulaic Fun

The day’s taken a dip, but fortunately here’s a new addition in the crowded field of formulaic, schmaltzy, badly acted—and highly entertaining—seasonal comfort food.

It’s a story as well-worn: An American woman goes on a quest to a far-off wintery locale and ends up finding romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher