Binge-Watching 2025's Christmas Films: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and consume a packet of festive treats in front of a terrific flick, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.

This year, a batch of new seasonal stories hopes to be part of our holiday traditions—maybe even finding a spot alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

Therefore, in a noble effort to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the holiday mood, I binged as many new holiday releases as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Starting, optimistically, on a positive note. This is the sole 2025 movie on a famous website's list of the top 100 holiday films of all time.

The Jonas Brothers are stranded in the UK after wrapping up their international trek and must make it back for Christmas. Their attempts are hampered by an villainous Saint Nick, who breaks into song to announce they won’t get home until they “rediscover their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is enjoyable even for the casual viewer, while devotees will undoubtedly pick up on lots of in-jokes as they try to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is excellent for fans and a positive start to the day.

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

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a celebrity tricked into a traditional British stage show.

“A what's a panto??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and aging star Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose agent has deceived him into thinking he’s appearing in high-class London stage.

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 stage call-and-response.

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

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit naff at another season, but is a lot of fun at Christmas.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

Danny Dyer appears at the start of this film, too, insulting someone for the second film in a row. Might this become a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a crooning chauffeur who collects Mr Sood, the modern take on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the filmmaker behind Gurinder Chadha. The well-known tale progresses 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 cultural adaptation is at least unique from all the others, but sadly he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s acting is lifeless—a major flaw when he’s so the focal point.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

Before lunch for a major broadcaster's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an large festive windfall at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) convinces him splurging the cash on a holiday to Lapland.

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

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

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

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is sent to a country estate to do a deal for a sparkling wine company. On the way, she meets a man in a book store who offers to show her Christmas in Paris.

A commentator recently stated this is the finest new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a Christmas romance with a touch of class and gives the necessary heartwarming sensation.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

A Charming Quest

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

The truth is to be discovered, and Chris sets out to find it with the expert help of a panel of well-known scientists and personalities.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the matriarch of a bickering American family who come back together for the holidays—including other 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 what this is, but in reality it’s really a jumble of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character finally takes center stage.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Formulaic Fun

The day’s gone downhill, but thankfully here’s a new offering in the saturated market of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and utterly watchable—seasonal comfort food.

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

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher