Marathon Viewing 2025's Festive Features: The Good, The Bad and The So-Bad-It's-Good.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and consume a tin of holiday pastries in front of a great film, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.

Once again, a selection of fresh Christmas films strives to join part of our festive viewing—perhaps even earning a place alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

Thus, in a vital public service to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to embrace the Christmas spirit, I watched as many recent holiday releases as possible in a single day.

7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Starting, hopefully, on a high. This film is the sole 2025 title on a well-known aggregator's list of the greatest 100 festive features of all time.

The musical trio are stranded in the UK after wrapping up their global concert series and must get home for Christmas. Their endeavors are hindered by an villainous Saint Nick, who breaks into song to declare they won’t get home until they “rekindle their familial spark.”

The banter between the squabbling siblings is amusing even for the non-fan, while fans 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 a timeless masterpiece, but is superb for fans and a good start to the day.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who are obliged to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland appears as a movie actor cast a "panto".

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

His Aladdin fellow actors tell him he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he insists angrily. One can imagine their retort. Unless you’re not acquainted with traditional stage call-and-response.

There are some great jokes, some touching storylines, and the ensemble is excellent, too.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

An actor shows up at the beginning of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the second consecutive movie. Might this become a fresh holiday staple?

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 a star of Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The well-known tale develops as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is confronted by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least distinct from all the others, but unfortunately he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s portrayal is flat—a significant issue when he’s so the focal point.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

12.04pm - Stuffed

There’s time for a channel's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he receives an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) talks him into spending the sum on a family trip to Lapland.

There’s just one issue—he finds out there was an mix-up with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to determine how to pay back the remainder.

Enjoyable but forgettable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the decorations and snow are in the backdrop—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is sent to a vineyard to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. En route, she encounters a guy in a bookshop who offers to show her a festive Paris.

A commentator recently claimed this is the top new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a festive dalliance with a dash of elegance and gives the necessary heartwarming sensation.

The scene with a detailed conversation about Die Hard is notable too.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, regardless of the attempts of his dad (starring James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.

The answer is somewhere, and Chris sets out to find it with the expert help of a panel of well-known figures.

It’s low-key but sweet, and ideal viewing while waiting for Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

A Star-Studded Family Drama

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother 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 starts by mentioning classic festive films like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before saying: “They need to make a movie about the unsung heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s the premise, but in practice it’s really a jumble of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last comes into her own.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Evening: A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s gone downhill, but thankfully here’s a new offering in the crowded field of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and highly entertaining—holiday fare.

It’s a narrative as familiar as can be: An American woman travels to a far-off wintery locale and ends up finding romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher