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

It is the season to slob out on the couch and devour a tin of festive treats in front of a terrific flick, a bad movie, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

This year, a selection of new Christmas films aims to become part of our festive viewing—perhaps even joining the ranks alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (no arguments).

Thus, in a vital public service to separate the winners from the losers, and to embrace the Christmas spirit, I binged as many new holiday releases as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

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

The popular band are stuck in the UK after concluding their global concert series and must return for Christmas. Their endeavors are hindered by an villainous Saint Nick, who breaks into song to announce they won’t get home until they “find their sibling bond.”

The banter between the bickering brothers is amusing even for the non-fan, while fans will undoubtedly catch lots of easter eggs as they try to get back using any means of transport necessary.

It’s a travelogue of mishaps.

It’s not legendary, but is excellent for fans and a solid start to the day.

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

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor roped into a "panto".

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and ageing action hero Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose representative has tricked him into thinking he’s starring in renowned British drama.

His Aladdin fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he insists angrily. It's easy to predict their response. That is, unless you’re ignorant of traditional British theatre traditions.

There are some very funny lines, some touching sub-plots, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

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 new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a musical taxi operator who collects Mr Sood, the latest spin 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 well-known tale progresses as the stingy Mr Sood is confronted by the apparitions of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This cultural adaptation is at least unique from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s performance is lifeless—a significant issue when he’s so the focal point.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

Before lunch for a major broadcaster's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a endearingly grumpy man who “avoids Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an large festive windfall at work, his wife (starring Morgana Robinson) persuades him spending the sum on a vacation to Lapland.

There’s just one problem—he learns there was an mistake with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to figure out how to return the difference.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the decorations 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 (played by Minka Kelly) is assigned to a country estate to do a deal for a sparkling wine company. During her travels, she encounters a man in a literary haven who vows to show her Christmas in Paris.

An expert recently declared this is the finest new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a exaggeration, but it is a Christmas romance with a hint of sophistication and gives the necessary heartwarming sensation.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, continues to believe in Father Christmas, regardless of the persuasion of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.

The secret is out there, and Chris ventures forth to find it with the assistance of a team of well-known experts and celebrities.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

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

Pfeiffer starts by mentioning 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 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 eventually comes into her own.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s waned in quality, but happily here’s a new offering in the crowded field of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and highly entertaining—festive fodder.

It’s a tale as well-worn: An American woman goes on a quest to a picturesque cold country and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher