New Christmas movies

Every 12 months it seems there are more and more movies created especially for this time of the year. However, navigating through the potentially hundreds of new Christmas films can be challenging, let alone sorting out the fun from the forgettable. To assist, Stuff to Watch has come up with a list of five festive flicks that we believe should help you get into the Yuletide spirit in the remaining nights left before Santa comes to visit.

Christmas Carole (Neon)

This modern-day twist on a certain Charles Dickens’ classic offers up a very different kind of role for Vigil’s Suranne Jones. She plays Carole Mackay, the owner of a successful festive season ephemera company, whose plans to sell to an American firm stand to make her incredibly wealthy and put all her employees out of a job. Cue a dark night of the soul as she’s visited by the “comedy” ghosts of Christmas past (a pitch-perfect Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel as Morecambe and Wise), present (Jo Brand) and future (Nish Kumar).

Best.Christmas. Ever! (Netflix)

A trio of late 90s stars – Jason Biggs, Heather Graham and Brandy Norwood – team up for this schmaltzy, contrived, but bright comedy. Charlotte Sanders (Graham) is convinced that much of his old college friend Jackie Jennings’ (Norwood) annual newsletter is fiction. To her horror, she gets to put her conspiracies to the test, when a GPS snafu takes her family directly to the Jennings’ opulent door.

Candy Cane Lane (Prime Video)

Eddie Murphy (Coming 2 America)

headlines this festive fantasy that feels like a cross between Jumanji, Sonic The Hedgehog and a Goosebumps story. He plays Chris Carver, a father-of-two whose Christmas isn’t exactly looking merry when he is made redundant. However, a solution to their potential financial woes comes from an unlikely source – El Segundo’s annual Candy Cane Lane house decoration competition this year comes with a top prize of $100,000. But with their Acacia Avenue neighbours’ having won the past three titles with a yard full of inflatables, Chris knows he’ll have to come up with something special – and more eye-catching than his previous lovingly hand-crafted ornaments. So

when he spies a special festive pop-up store and is wowed by what lies within, he is prepared to take the plunge – no matter what the price.

Family Switch (Netflix) (Yes Day)

Jennifer Garner continues her reign as the “mother of Netflix” with this fitfully funny festive take on Freaky Friday. The Walkers’ lives are thrown into chaos when wishes made while witnessing a rare planetary alignment at the local observatory result in father and son and mother and daughter (as well as baby and dog) swapping bodies. Naturally, it couldn’t have come at a worse time with Jess (Garner) up for a promotion at her architectural firm, CC (Emma Myers) playing in a potentially career-making soccer match, Wyatt (Brady Noon) being interviewed by Yale and high school music teacher Bill’s (Ed Helms) band Dad or Alive attracting interest from a reality show.

The Naughty Nine (Disney+)

While there are less-than-subtle lessons to be learned about appreciating your siblings, there is also a hell of a lot to like about this tween heist movie. Yes, it’s Ocean’s 11 for Generation Alpha as serial schemer and prankster Andy Steele (Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile’s Winslow Fegley) assembles a crack team of specialist kids (including a gymnast, an animal whisperer, a master of disguise and an adorable innocent) for his greatest operation ever – busting into Santa’s workshop to “retrieve” the gifts he and his friends feel they have been unfairly denied because of their appearance on “the naughty list”.