Settling in for a Christmas movie binge? Calum Henderson has watched them all, so here are a few words of warning.
6. Christmas With a View
The only real redeeming feature of this interminable romance - she's a restaurant manager, he's a deeply uncharismatic chef from a reality cooking show - is when Patrick Duffy shows up sporting a completely outrageous ponytail. Otherwise, this should be considered an absolute last resort, for Christmas movie completists only.
5. The Holiday Calendar
An enchanted advent calendar that can predict the future should be so much cooler than the one in this dreary romantic comedy. A typical day: the recipient opens the door to find a tiny pair of ice skates, then her crush asks her out on a date ... ice skating. If you're in the market for a nice, bland, sentimental Christmas movie, this one certainly won't disappoint.
4. The Christmas Chronicles
It's impossible to overstate just how irritating the two siblings in this movie are. Of all the kids who get to meet Santa and help him deliver the presents, it had to be these intolerable brats. Kurt Russell as Santa is good value, though, and there are some magical moments sure to excite the imaginations of the young and young at heart. But the long bit in the middle where Santa goes to jail and makes all the other prisoners help him perform a Christmas blues song that seems to go on for about 15 minutes makes it difficult to recommend.
3. Angela's Christmas
They really did it, they made an animated children's Christmas movie based on Angela's Ashes. It's actually pretty good – a sweet, warm-hearted fugitive story about a girl who rescues (aka steals) the baby Jesus from the church nativity scene and has to hide him from the up-in-arms parishioners. The only non-American offering on the list has a lot going for it, not least the fact that it's only half an hour long.
