Christmas Above The Clouds | 2025 Christmas Movies

There have been a wide variety of adaptations of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Back in 2020, Hallmark gave us A Nashville Christmas Carol. Then in 2021, they had Boyfriends of Christmas Past. And this year it’s Christmas Above The Clouds. At least they gave us a break in between adaptations this year?

Ella Neezer (Erin Krakow) is the CEO of a travel company. She demands her employees work just as hard as she does. Unfortunately, that means she makes them choose between their families and their work, just as she did when she broke off her engagement to Jake (Tyler Hynes) when she started moving up the corporate ladder. It wasn’t until now, on a flight to Australia with her assistant Bobbi Cratchet (Emily Tennant) and, surprisingly, Jake, that her mentor, Marlene Jacobson (Gabrielle Rose), visits her from beyond the grave to inform her about the impending visits from three Christmas spirits. Will they be able to bring empathy and love back to Ella?

Could it be? Is it possible that we have THREE decent Christmas movies this early in the movie season? Maybe my expectations were low because, this story is told so many times that it feels rare to find a good adaptation of it. But, yes, Christmas Above The Clouds gave us an interesting take. Sure, it’s not anything new and Jake does feel a little tacked on but Krakow makes a very good Scrooge character and I found myself enjoying the three spirits. It might not make the best movie list but I didn’t regret watching it either!

Rating: 4 Christmas Spirits out of 5 - OK, there aren’t five Christmas spirits but the rating still stands!

A Newport Christmas | 2025 Christmas Movies

So we’ve got another period Christmas movie starring Ginna Claire Mason - A Newport Christmas. If she had a nickel for every time she starred in a period Christmas movie on Hallmark, she’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice. Right?

Ella (Mason), a socialite living in 1905 Newport, wants to start a charitable foundation instead of getting married as her father wishes. While on an evening ride in her sailboat, Ella wishes on a comet for a different life where she can find love. Suddenly, she is transported to 2025, where Nick (Wes Brown) appears on her boat mysteriously. When they get back to town, they realize that Ella has somehow time traveled to the present day. Now they must figure out how to get her back to 1905 before all of her past charitable work is undone.

I’m not quite sure how they managed to do it but this movie is both interesting and boring at the same time. There will be scenes where Ella shines as a character - for example, when she is giving the tour of her former home - but then the movie will just drag as Nick shows her how Newport has changed over the years. He really is the worst part of the movie. I kinda wish that this wasn’t a romance movie and that it was just Ella and historian Christine (Talia Robinson) learning how each other lived their lives in their respective times. That was much more interesting than anything Nick did. Except for maybe the twist ending. I guess that part made him interesting.

Rating: 3 lessons in fan language out of 5 - I want to know more fan signs!

Christmas On Duty | 2025 Christmas Movies

Every year, we get some sort of military-themed Christmas movie. Usually they are about missing family members that can’t come home for the holidays or helping veterans or something like that. Christmas On Duty has chosen a different route.

Blair (Janel Parrish) and Josh (Parker Young) have been bitter rivals ever since basic training. Three years after they went their separate ways, Josh takes a job at Quantico, where Blair is stationed. When a snowstorm shuts down all deliveries to the base, the pair gets assigned to save Christmas by playing Santa themselves.

I’m not going to lie. I almost always find the military-themed movies boring. The writers try to go for sentimental but they always end up preachy instead. This one isn’t any different. There is zero chemistry between Parrish and Young, watching them drive around picking up Christmas presents is dull at best (even when they have to puzzle their way out of things), and the USAA in-movie advertisements are cringy. I want to like these movies, I really do. Isn’t there someone out there that can write a good one?

Rating: 1.5 climbing jumpropes out of 5 - Yeah, that still won’t hold your weight

A Christmas Angel Match | 2025 Christmas Movies

While there are usually a few religious Christmas movies released every year, they aren’t usually on Hallmark and they don’t usually involve angels. Needless to say, that made A Christmas Angel Match sound very interesting. Now to figure out what a Christmas angel match is…

Monica (Meghan Ory) is an angel that brings together human soulmates during the Christmas season. She has been doing this for hundreds of years and is the most successful Christmas angel. But recently, a new angel, Michael (Benjamin Ayres), has been matching many more soulmates. With a rumor of their department being downsized, Monica is forced to work with Michael to complete their new assignment: to get humans Daisy (Lindura) and Patrick (Francesco Filice) together before the end of the year.

I actually enjoyed A Christmas Angel Match, for the most part. While I easily figured out what the big twist would be early on (I won’t spoil it here), I found that twist to be boring. I would have loved to have seen Monica and Michael working on different couples together because that is when the angels were at their best. But this is a Hallmark romance movie, emphasis on the romance.

It also would have have been interesting to see the Valentine’s angels. There’s a reference that the Christmas angel department would be merged with the Valentine angel department but we never actually see a Valentine angel. We just see the Christmas angels outwardly cringing at the idea, which doesn’t feel very angelic.

A Christmas Angel Match may not be a perfect Hallmark Christmas movie. But it does come pretty darn close.

Rating: 4 hot chocolates out of 5 - I want to do cloud yoga

A Royal Montana Christmas | 2025 Christmas Movies

It’s our very first Christmas movie of the 2025 season and it’s a royalty movie! Thanks, Hallmark, for starting us out….strong? Let’s see if A Royal Montana Christmas lives up to our royal expectations.

Princess Victoria (Fiona Gubelmann) of Zelarnia is about to take over her mother’s royal duties. However, before she steps into her mother’s shoes, she decides to take a vacation to Peaceful Pines Ranch, a ranch in Montana that she visited as a child with her father. Upon her arrival in town, she meets Huntley Blaylock (Warren Christie), the son of the owners who are about to retire. As the pair works to bring back the ranch’s Christmas Holly-Day Dance, they begin to fall in love. But Victoria must go back to her royal duties and Huntley must stay in Montana to run the family business, right?

I’m not going to lie, this movie was so boring. There wasn’t anything interesting that happened. We don’t learn anything about Victoria’s family or country. We barely learn anything about the ranch or Huntley. This was two people walking around together and petting some horses. Oh, I guess they did argue about what type of tree they should cut down for the dance. Otherwise, I’m really not sure what they saw in each other.

Well, this isn’t the best start to the season. I hope that they can sprinkle in some really good movies in between the boring stuff. I need something to look forward to.

Rating: 2 wooden horses out of 5 - maybe someone should be surprised when the guest is revealed to be royalty

Christmas 2024 Wrap-Up

And now it is time to wrap up the 2024 Christmas season. It felt both hectic and laid back at the same time. I’m not sure how that happened!

This year I watched 74 Christmas movies. That is probably why this season felt more laid back. This was the the lowest number of movies I have watched since I moved from my advent calendar format. 2023 was 92 movies, 2022 was 127, 2021 was 78, and 2020 was 86. I think this is because Hallmark moved some of their new releases to their Hallmark+ streaming service, which I did not subscribe to this year. That cut at least seven movies from the schedule. It was also frustratingly difficult to find new movies this time around. Great American Family continues to change their movies after they have released their schedule. Movies they have announced to air on one date will be replaced by a different movie and air on a different date. It was so frustrating.

Speaking of Great American Family, I am going to cut them from the list of movies next year. While I wanted to continue to watch Candace Cameron-Bure and Danica McKellar, almost all of the movies on the channel are so boring and difficult to sit through. I hope that their 2025 movies don’t turn political but it feels like that is the way the channel is heading.

Since I am going to cut out GAF, I am going to spend more energy trying to find movies on other streaming channels. I didn’t watch anything on Roku, Disney+ (though I did watch one Hulu movie), or Peacock. There was also a locally-made movie released in theaters that I was hoping to go see but I couldn’t make it in time. And, who knows, maybe I will sign up for Hallmark+ this year. We’ll have to wait and see what their streaming-only releases are.

As always, please feel free to let me know if there is a streaming channel that you’d like me to cover. I know there are a million of them out there now. There has to be a channel with some great Christmas movies that I don’t know about.

Best Christmas Movies of 2024

If you have read most of my Christmas movie reviews this season, you’ll know that a majority of the movies were super boring. They were so boring that it made it really difficult to keep watching them. (And I didn’t watch the last five of the season!) However, this is the list of the bright, shiny Christmas lights that kept me going even when I wanted to stop early. These are the best Christmas movies of 2024.

BeBe Winans’ We Three Kings - It’s rare for me to want a Christmas movie to be longer. This was one that did.
All I Need For Christmas - The movie that proved that adults can apologize to each other when they screw up.
Hanukkah On The Rocks - Hallmark airs one Hanukkah movie each season. It is amazing when the movie teaches about the various Hanukkah traditions.
The 5-Year Christmas Party - Sometimes a movie needs to be a slow burn. This wouldn’t have worked any other way.
Debbie Macomber’s Joyful Mrs. Miracle - I never thought I would love a Mrs. Miracle movie. I was wrong.
Sugarplummed - My favorite movie of the season. Anyone who disagrees is just plain wrong.

Honorable Mentions:
Holiday Crashers - This one was just plain fun.
A Christmas Castle Proposal - A sweet little change-up to the prince trope. Though it may have slipped onto the honorable mentions list because it’s a sequel.

There were a few other movies that were decent but not quite good enough to make the Best list. These are the ones that really did make me think “Oh, maybe the next movie will be this good too!” instead of making me want to cancel my streaming subscriptions. I hope Christmas movies keep getting better instead of worse. Next up, my big Christmas wrap-up post where I talk about my plans for Christmas 2025.

Worst Christmas Movies of 2024

While I don’t normally like to start the year out on a negative note, I want to get the worst movie list out of the way so we can talk about the good movies this year! A lot of the movies this year weren’t bad, just boring. I’d hate to put them on the worst list for being boring. With that said, let’s get into the worst Christmas movies of 2024.

A ‘90s Christmas - When you link your movie to a specific decade, the viewers are looking for nostalgia. This movie only gives confusion.
Five Gold Rings - A mystery movie that completely fell apart by the second ring.
Christmas On The Alpaca Farm - This was a movie written by people who heard of alpacas but never actually saw one.
Tails Of Christmas - Never, ever make dogs the focus of your movie. It always ends up making your movie bad.
Mistletoe & Matrimony - I wasn’t sure about putting this on the list because it wasn’t completely terrible. Then I remembered the bride wanted to book a horse-drawn carriage at the last minute for a Christmas Eve wedding in Chicago.
Christmas By Candlelight - Bad script, bad plot, bad acting. There isn’t much more to say.
Christmas With The Singhs - This one wouldn’t have been on the list if the writers didn’t make the Singhs so unbearable. It’s possible to make a “sucky in-laws” movie without making them whiny babies.
Leah’s Perfect Gift - I almost rage-quit this movie. We need a sequel where Leah leaves the awful family before she marries their son and finds someone awesome who actually loves her.

Dishonorable Mentions:
Deck The Walls - While this movie wasn’t awful, the product placement was so bad and so in-your-face that it gets a dishonorable mention.
Sincerely, Truly Christmas - When the main female character acts like a child, it’s an immediate ‘no, thank you’ from me.

There you have it. These are the movies I thought were the worst this year. Let me know if you want a separate list for the movies I thought were the most boring. There were a lot of them! Coming up next: The BEST movies!

Carry-On | 2024 Christmas Movies

Taking a short break from the romance and family friendly fare, we’re turning to Netflix’s newest thriller, Carry-On. It’s only rated PG-13 so it shouldn’t be too scary.

Ethan (Taron Egerton) is a TSA agent at LAX. When he asks his supervisor about a possible promotion, he gets moved to the carry on luggage scanner as a test. Unfortunately, this puts him directly in the path of an unknown traveler (Jason Bateman) who wants him to pass through a carry on no matter what the scanner says or else Ethan’s pregnant girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson), will die. Ethan, unwilling to put his girlfriend or everyone on the target airplane in danger, does everything he can to avoid disaster.

Carry-On is a pretty typical terrorist type of action movie. Something along the lines of Die Hard, which also takes place during the Christmas season. Much like Die Hard, this was quite enjoyable. As with most movies like this, there were a few parts where I wondered how many bullets a certain gun could hold or why an officer didn’t respond to someone acting weird in an airport. But none of that took anything away from the movie itself. If you are looking for something beyond Christmas romance, this should fit the bill.

Rating: I will never look at carry on luggage the same

That Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

There hasn’t been a ton of new Christmas movies for kids this year. Thankfully, Netflix has released That Christmas, an animated story that kids will probably love. The plot is a little difficult to describe so hold on tight!

A huge blizzard is about to hit the town of Wellington-On-Sea. As Christmas Eve approaches, Sam (Zazie Hayhurst) worries that her naughty twin, Charlie (Sienna Sayer), won’t receive any presents from Santa. Meanwhile, Sam’s friend, Danny (Jack Wisniewski), who happens to have a crush on Sam, is having trouble with loneliness since his single mother has been very busy with work and his father is unable to reach him due to the snow. Then there is another group of children who have been left home under the care of Bernadette (India Brown), the eldest of the children, as their parents attend a family wedding. Will they all be able to have a happy Christmas?

While this is a strange movie, it was really cute. From an American perspective, it does seem that most of the parents are awfully neglectful but I think things are very different in the United Kingdom. Also, maybe they should learn to check the weather report before they leave their children home alone. But it’s this loneliness that brings them all together and shows them that community is very important. Especially around the holidays.

Rating: I would also like to celebrate Kids Christmas