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

It is the season to slob out on the couch and consume a tin of festive treats in front of a good movie, a awful feature, or one that’s awesomely awful.

This year, a batch of latest holiday movies hopes to be part of our holiday traditions—perhaps even earning a place alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (no arguments).

Therefore, in a vital public service to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to embrace the holiday mood, I binged as many recent festive movies as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Starting, optimistically, on a positive note. This release is the exclusive 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the top 100 Christmas movies of all time.

The Jonas Brothers end up stranded in the UK after finishing their world tour and must return for Christmas. Their efforts are hindered by an villainous Saint Nick, who bursts into melody to announce they won’t get home until they “rekindle their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the bickering brothers is enjoyable even for the uninitiated, while devotees will certainly notice lots of references as they attempt to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a travelogue of mishaps.

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

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

8.45am - Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor tricked into a "panto".

“A what's a panto??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and aging star Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose representative has deceived him into thinking he’s starring in renowned British drama.

His pantomime fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he protests. One can imagine their reply. That is, unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional stage call-and-response.

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

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit tacky at another season, but is a great entertainment at Christmas.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

An actor appears at the start of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the second consecutive movie. Is this a fresh holiday staple?

This time, he’s a crooning chauffeur 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 the filmmaker behind Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative unfolds 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 Indian Scrooge is at least unique from all the others, but unfortunately he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s performance is flat—a problem when he’s so the focal point.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

There's just enough time for a channel's holiday special—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he receives an large festive windfall at work, his wife (starring Morgana Robinson) convinces him splurging the cash on a vacation to Lapland.

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

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the backdrop—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its core purpose—but it feels cosy and festive all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a vineyard to do a deal for a sparkling wine company. On the way, she meets a fellow in a bookshop who vows to show her Christmas in Paris.

A commentator recently stated 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 hint of sophistication and gives the necessary warm and fuzzy feels.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

A Charming Quest

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

The truth is out there, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the assistance of a group of well-known figures.

It’s gentle but endearing, and perfect viewing while waiting for Santa to visit.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the head of a bickering American family who come back together for the holidays—including other acclaimed actress Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping holiday staples like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before stating: “They need to make a movie about the unsung heroes of the holidays—moms.”

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s taken a dip, but fortunately here’s a new addition in the saturated market of formulaic, schmaltzy, badly acted—and highly entertaining—holiday fare.

It’s a narrative as old as time: An American woman travels to a far-off wintery locale and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher