Marathon Viewing This Year's Holiday Movies: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to lounge on the sofa and devour a box of holiday pastries in front of a terrific flick, a bad movie, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

As always, a selection of new Christmas films strives to join part of our seasonal watchlist—perhaps even earning a place alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

So, in a vital public service to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to embrace the Christmas spirit, I marathoned as many recent Christmas films as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Kicking off, optimistically, on a good foot. This is the only 2025 entry on a popular review site's list of the greatest 100 holiday films of all time.

The Jonas Brothers find themselves stranded in the UK after concluding their world tour and must get home for Christmas. Their attempts are hindered by an villainous Saint Nick, who sings to declare they won’t get home until they “rekindle their sibling bond.”

The banter between the bickering brothers is enjoyable even for the uninitiated, while followers will certainly pick up on lots of in-jokes as they endeavor to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

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

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

8.45am - Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland appears as a movie actor roped into a traditional British stage show.

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

His Aladdin fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. It's easy to predict their retort. Unless you’re ignorant of traditional British theatre traditions.

There are some very funny lines, some cockle-warming storylines, and the ensemble is excellent, too.

It’s the kind of movie that would be a bit tacky at any other time of year, but is a great entertainment at Christmas.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

Danny Dyer shows up at the outset of this film, too, insulting someone for the second film in a row. Might this become a budding festive ritual?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who picks up 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 director of Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative develops as the miserly Mr Sood is confronted 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 unfortunately he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s performance is lifeless—a significant issue when he’s so the focal point.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

There’s time for a channel's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he gets an sizable holiday payout at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) persuades him blowing the money on a holiday to Lapland.

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

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 backdrop—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels cosy and festive all the same.

Driven corporate star Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a vineyard to secure an acquisition for a sparkling wine company. On the way, she encounters a fellow in a literary haven who promises to show her Christmas in Paris.

An expert recently declared this is the top new Christmas film of the past few years. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a holiday love story with a touch of class and gives the obligatory warm and fuzzy feels.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Teenage Chris, played by Lenny Rush, continues to believe in Father Christmas, in spite of the efforts of his dad (starring James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.

The answer is somewhere, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the assistance of a team of well-known figures.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

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

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping Christmas classics 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 what this is, but in execution it’s really a jumble of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character eventually takes center stage.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

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

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

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher