Devouring 2025's Festive Features: The Hits, The Misses, and The Guilty Pleasures.

It is the season to relax on the couch and demolish a packet of holiday pastries in front of a terrific flick, a awful feature, or one that’s awesomely awful.

As always, a batch of new holiday movies aims to become part of our holiday traditions—potentially even earning a place alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

Therefore, in a vital public service to distinguish the gems from the coal, and to embrace the holiday mood, I marathoned as many recent holiday releases as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Kicking off, hopefully, on a high. This release is the exclusive 2025 movie on a well-known aggregator's list of the greatest 100 festive features of all time.

The musical trio end up stranded in the UK after wrapping up their global concert series and must get home for Christmas. Their attempts are thwarted by an malevolent Father Christmas, who sings to announce they won’t get home until they “rediscover their familial spark.”

The back-and-forth between the bickering brothers is enjoyable even for the casual viewer, while devotees will undoubtedly notice lots of in-jokes as they endeavor to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

It’s not an all-time classic, but is superb 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.

Late Morning: Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland appears as a celebrity roped into a "panto".

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “temperamental” and ageing action hero Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose representative has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in prestigious English theatre.

His pantomime co-stars tell him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he protests. It's easy to predict their retort. Unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional stage call-and-response.

There are some great jokes, some heartwarming storylines, and the rest of the cast is cracking, too.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

An actor shows up at the outset of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the second film in a row. Could this be 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 a star of Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative progresses as the miserly Mr Sood is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This Indian Scrooge is at least distinct from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s acting is lifeless—a problem when he’s so central to everything.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

12.04pm - Stuffed

There's just enough time for a network's holiday special—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

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

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

Fun while it lasts but not lasting.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the festive trappings are in the backdrop—Christmas is the environment of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels cosy and festive all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is sent to a French chateau to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. En route, she runs into a guy in a literary haven who promises to show her the holidays in the City of Light.

A critic recently stated this is the top 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 required heartwarming sensation.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Sixteen-year-old Chris, played by Lenny Rush, refuses to stop believing in Father Christmas, regardless of the efforts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

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

It’s gentle but charming, and good viewing while anticipating 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 acclaimed actress Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping 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 concept, but in reality it’s really a combination of those inspirations, at least until Pfeiffer’s character finally finds her strength.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s waned in quality, but thankfully here’s a new offering in the saturated market of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and strangely compelling—seasonal comfort food.

It’s a tale 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