Oy to the World (2025): I heard good buzz about this one, the Hannukah movies are usually good, and It was musically themed, so I watched it with the wife, who is ok with these, but I only make her watch what I expect to be the better ones. I dunno, it was fine, but nothing special. Brooke D'Orsay plays a church choir director who has a past relationship with Jake Epstein, who is directing a synagogue choir. The stars are likable, and the big song is good, but I expected more.

A Make or Break Holiday (2025): In a spin on the ever-popular fake-dating trope, Hunter King and Evan Roderick (Finding Mr Christmas winner) are a couple who decide to take a break just when their extended families are staying with them for Christmas. This was also fine, and Roderick was fine. I know I saw a Mr Christmas winner last year, Ezra Moreland, and this year he had a supporting role in Christmas on Duty. I have no idea who he was because that was like a dozen movies ago.

An Alpine Holiday (2025): This is this year's Ashley Williams vehicle (I wonder if Kimberly Williams-Paisley is still acting), and she has a new sister in Laci Mailey, who has been the lead a couple times before and is pretty good. Interplay with the sisters was good, as was the scenery.

A Suite Holiday Romance (2025): Another spin on a popular trope: Jesse Schram thinks she's dating a royal, but it's just a royal's secretary, which I guess is why they didn't put "Royal" in the title. That refers to the grand hotel which is the setting and subplot of the movie, as Schram interviews someone and learns the history of the site. It was pretty good.

Thanks to the smaller slate this year, I'm within a few of finishing lol. I don't have The Snow Must Go On on my DVR, maybe by accidental deletion or something, but it'll probably be on again. But because they didn't have to fill the Movies & Mysteries slate, there haven't been any of the heavy dramas, like Time for ___ to Come Home or The Christmas Note etc. That's ok with me, but also most of them have been around the 3.5/5 star range. Solid and watchable, but not something I'd watch again.

Special mention of Buffalo Bill Demar Hamlin, who cameo'd not only in the Bills movie but also in The More the Merrier. And while there are always product placements (IKEA), there was one service that actually got into the plot, and a couple characters discussed it. I don't remember what it was, so take that, product placement!

Yeah, Oy to the World was considered a surprise disappointment by at least a couple of prominent Hallmark Bloggers. I think I enjoyed the film more than they did but it is not a film I am clamoring to watch again.

This years slates of films was ultimately a bit meh, just okay films and I am not sure any of them will get a yearly rewatch. They played it a bit too safe this year. I hope they are getting some feedback that the right folks are paying attention to and we get a better mix of films this year.

To be fair, it might just be that over the past 5-10 years so many of these films have been thrown at us from all directions (Hallmark, GAC, UP, Lifetime, Netflix, BET+, etc.) that there is a general feeling of burnout regarding these films.

I think some folks would be shocked if Hallmark did this, but I wonder if they should slowly retire their Countdown To Christmas Event and let it morph into something else (and maybe this years slate of films being cut in half was the start of this retiring of the event).

It might come off as crazy, but why just adhere to the seasons, throw up Valentine's type Romcom in the beginning of December, have a national park destination film pop-up in Oct, have a Halloween themed film on Thanksgiving week, and a Turkey Day film on Halloween. If we can have Christmas In July, we can have Valentines Day in December, lol. Also, Hallmark could still limit themselves to no more than 2 new films a weekend starting the beginning of the Fall Season.

I am saying maybe folks like Hallmark, Lifetime, GAC, Netflix can just throw up films throughout the year whenever the film is in the can and ready to air and not sit on the film until a certain Holiday rolls around, not caring that certain films might have a Holiday backdrop such as Halloween, but are ready to air in June. I suspect they will not do this, but it does feel like this was the beginning of the end of how Hallmark has aired films over the past 10-20 years.

Lifetime had a much stronger slate of holiday movies this year than Hallmark, though admittedly they have far fewer originals. Hallmark used to have this space of Christmas movies more or less to themselves but the competition has absolutely exploded in the past 4 years. Hallmark is experimenting now so much with the "formula" I grow less and less pleased with them. I am not their audience anymore.

I'll tell you who had the worst 2025 Christmas slate by far - UPTV. They have never really competed with the big boys but usually would produce 4-6 'B' or 'C' type Christmas movies. Their 2025 lineup was thoroughly mediocre and frankly unwatchable.

I watched the last three on my DVR

Three Wisest Men (2025): I liked the original movie better than either of the sequels, but it's still entertaining to see the three leads ham it up, and it was more slapstick-screwball than most Hallmark movies. Co-writer Kimberly Sustad makes an appearance, of course, and Ali Liebert (The Christmas Baby) has a small role..

We Met in December (2025): Autumn Reeser and Niall Matter meet in an airport then get separated without having shared their contact info, so they use new and old methods to try to find each other. I had high-enough hopes for this to watch it with the wife, and it was fine. Autumn is gorgeous of course, but it was a little tiresome to have the constant near-misses over and over, as skatefan mentioned.

Single on the 25th (2025): I think this was one of the better ones this year, with likable leads to make it work.

So my favorites turned out to be Keller Family Christmas, The Christmas Baby, Christmas Above the Clouds, and Single on the 25th. I didn't really branch out to UP and Lifetime and barely touched GAC. For one thing, I had a coworker who was a fan enough to go to the experiences and knew some of the podcasters, so she used to tell me about the good non-Hallmarks, but we both left our jobs and don't keep up as much. I did watch a few on Netflix and one on Prime, and all were fine but not especially notable.

I still have 12 Dates of Christmas and about half the 2025 movies still on my DVR lol.

I really really do recommend the "Hallmark Movies" youtube channel. I have now counted up to 50 movies on the channel. I've only seen a handful of the movies on it but there are some deep cut movies on it.

I finally wrapped up the holiday 2025 DVR stuff. I took a chance on another GAC, Pencil Me In for Christmas, because someone here had mentioned it. It still has some of the terrible dialogue and stilted acting that characterizes GAF titles, but it wasn't terrible, and Greer Grammer (daughter of Kelsey) was somewhat appealing. I mentioned earlier that the "new" Brittany Bristow film was from 2023 and had been renamed and repackaged as a 2025 film, and that was also the case here.

I also watched 12 Dates Till Christmas, a six-episode series starring Mae Whitman as a perpetual single who signs up for a service to help her find a match. It's not something I'll ever rewatch, but it held my interest.

I watched a four-movie series from 2025 called Hearts Around the Table. The concept is that a bunch of foster kids are now adult friends and still have dinner with their foster mom every Sunday. It's kind of like The Wedding Veil in which each character has their own movie, but the other characters appear in them, and in this series they're even more interwoven. Ashley Newborough is the most prominent so she's the lead in the first movie, while Josh Epstein from Oy to the World gets the third. The second movie was the least interesting to me, but even that one has a funny moment when one of the leads arrives at the airport and the other three have a phone argument about who was supposed to pick her up, but then they're all there to surprise her. The interactions among the cast are the best part of the series.

I watched a few other 2025 movie series, all with a travel vibe.

To Barcelona with Love and Barcelona Forever were a nice pairing of Alison Sweeney and Ashley Williams. Ashley writes a novel about Barcelona despite having never been there, but it turns out to be a big hit after a liberal translation by resident Alison. The plot is resolved after the first movie and they probably could've left it there, but they're fun enough to make the second movie work.

Love on the Danube was three standalone movies that take place aboard a cruise line, with the cruise director and one passenger as recurring characters. The pairings are Nazneen Contractor and Wes Brown, Dan Jeannotte and Jessica Sipos, and Brendan Penny and Sarah Power. These were all fine.

The Groomsmen was a variation on the Wedding Veil series, with Tyler Hines, BJ Britt, and Jonathan Bennett as best friends who each get their own movie but are always present in all of them. Heather Hemmens was the only partner who I knew. These all seemed kind of inevitable plot-wise, but the bromance was enjoyable. There's a framing sequence with a runaway bride (Lily Dodsworth-Evans), and she's so distractingly gorgeous that I found myself looking forward to her segments. These had scenes in Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy.

I have surprised myself in that I would start watching a handful of the Hallmark 2026 originals, and find them to not be all that interesting so I would pause and consider finishing up at a later date. Of course, some Hallmark Podcasters that I trust would then point out how bad some of the films are and I would not finish. The days of my pretty much always finishing up every Hallmark film I started up have ended. Too much other stuff to watch instead of forcing myself to sit through a bad tv quality film.

That being said, there have been some real winners such as the film that starred Kim Matula a month or two back. Her film was just a straight up good movie not just a good Hallmark Original.

I recently found a film on Tubi called The Echo Of Thunder that is a 1998 film that was labeled a Hallmark Hall Of Fame film that I do not remember watching on TV. It was actually fantastic with some great acting by a really solid cast, including the kids in the film. One of the kids is played by Emily Browning (of Sucker Punch fame), and this was her film debut.

Worth a watch if you have not viewed this film before and apparently it is also on Hallmark+ (but I first chanced upon it while browsing Tubi so I just watched it there).

It takes place in Australia, and is definitely a bit grittier and heavy than many Hallmark films from years past. Put it this way, wife/Mom in the film actively dislikes one of the kids she ends up having to take care-of, so her personality is rough in the film but it works. There is also a scene where she is swinging a hatchet to chop down some brush and there is a cutaway right before she misses and you hear her scream as the ax sinks into her leg. Nothing graphic but you see lots of blood as the kids scramble to get her in the car and take her to a hospital. The scene made me go whoa!!! One of the more intense scenes I have viewed in a film in quite some time.

ETA: Anyone who watches this film will be surprised that I made no mention of two other intense scenes so I am updating this post. First, there is a scene where the very young Emily Brown catches fire (I will say no more, but yeah...a kid on fire was shown on a Hallmark film back in the day), and another where a bully of a teenage boy shoots at a young school age girl and her dog, and again I will say no more. They kind-of don't make Hallmark films like they used to especially comparing this film to most films from Hallmark released in the last 10-15+ years.

This past weekend the Kentucky Derby film was an easy enough watch. Andrew Walker, and Odette Annable star.

Yeah, the Hall of Fame titles from a few years back can get pretty heavy. Current films can hit hard especially with themes of loss, but don't have the same kind of grit.