Devouring The Latest Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the time of year to lounge on the couch and devour a tin of holiday pastries in front of a good movie, a bad movie, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

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

So, in a vital public service to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the Christmas spirit, I marathoned as many new holiday releases as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Beginning, optimistically, on a high. This release is the exclusive 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the greatest 100 holiday films of all time.

The musical trio find themselves stuck in the UK after finishing their global concert series and must return for Christmas. Their endeavors are hampered by an villainous Saint Nick, who sings to announce they won’t get home until they “rekindle their sibling bond.”

The back-and-forth between the arguing trio is amusing even for the non-fan, while devotees will certainly pick up on lots of easter eggs as they endeavor to get back using all transportation available.

It’s a travelogue of mishaps.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who will have to sit through it.

Next: A Star in Panto

Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland appears as a Hollywood star roped into a traditional British stage show.

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “temperamental” and older action hero Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose manager has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin fellow actors tell him he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he retorts. It's easy to predict their response. Except if you’re not acquainted with traditional stage call-and-response.

There are some very funny lines, some cockle-warming storylines, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit cheesy at any other time of year, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

Danny Dyer appears at the start of this film, too, insulting someone for the next movie straight. 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 The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story develops as the miserly Mr Sood is haunted by the ghosts 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 sadly he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s acting is wooden—a problem when he’s so the focal point.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

There’s time for a network's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “avoids Christmas.”

But after he gets an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (starring Morgana Robinson) talks him into spending the sum on a holiday to Lapland.

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

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the setting—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its main point—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 champagne business. During her travels, she encounters a guy in a book store who offers to show her Christmas in Paris.

A commentator recently claimed this is the finest new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a festive dalliance with a hint of sophistication and gives the obligatory warm and fuzzy feels.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

Teenage Chris, played by Lenny Rush, refuses to stop believing in Father Christmas, regardless of the persuasion of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him the truth.

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

It’s gentle but charming, and perfect viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the head of a quarrelling American family who come back together for the holidays—including fellow Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer begins by referencing Christmas classics 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 execution it’s really a combination of those inspirations, at least until Pfeiffer’s character eventually takes center stage.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s gone downhill, but happily here’s a new addition in the packed genre of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—festive fodder.

It’s a story as old as time: An American woman goes on a quest to a distant snowy land and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher