As published on Caderno B+

For years, I’ve closed out the year with recommendations of films and series to get us through the final days of December — and anyone who follows my columns already knows this: Christmas, for me, is about revisiting what I already love. It’s a ritual, emotional repetition, memory triggered by the right soundtrack or by a story we know by heart. That’s why this list tends to change very little. It’s not laziness. It’s a choice.

There is an entire phonographic and audiovisual market built around Christmas, delivering — year after year — disposable, predictable, and yet comforting content. These films exist to fill the silence between meals, to accompany crowded homes, to offer happy endings without demanding full attention. In 2025, this market makes something even clearer: Christmas has become a strategic asset — and stars help sustain it. From action blockbusters to family comedies and more ironic portraits of emotional burnout, this year’s releases reveal different ways of exploiting the same date. And like any good end-of-year tradition, the list also makes room for a classic that, while not technically a Christmas film, has crossed generations as an inseparable part of this season.

Operation Christmas — Amazon Prime Video

Here, Christmas is treated as a global event — literally. Operation Christmas leans into action, fantasy, and blockbuster pacing to turn December 25 into the setting for an impossible mission. Everything is big, loud, and deliberately over the top.

It is the clearest example of Christmas-as-spectacle. The film exists as a star vehicle for Dwayne Johnson, transforming the holiday into high-octane entertainment, far removed from any notion of emotional delicacy.

A Surreal Christmas — Amazon Prime Video

In this film, Christmas stops being a place of comfort and becomes a breaking point. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a woman who decides to simply disappear from her own celebration after years of being invisible within her family dynamic. The gesture unleashes a chain of absurd, uncomfortable, and revealing situations.

Pfeiffer’s presence redefines the project. This is not a childish Christmas story, but an ironic portrait of emotional exhaustion, emptied-out motherhood, and the symbolic pressure the holiday carries.

The Christmas Battle — Amazon Prime Video

Christmas returns to the realm of classic family comedy. Eddie Murphy plays a father obsessed with winning a neighborhood Christmas competition, turning the holiday into an escalating mess of excess, mistakes, and physical comedy.

Murphy operates in a register he has mastered for decades. This is Christmas as collective chaos, designed to become a domestic tradition, revisited year after year.

My Secret Santa — Netflix

A struggling single mother accepts a job disguised as Santa Claus at a luxury resort during Christmas. The plan quickly becomes complicated when real feelings begin to surface.

The film follows the Christmas rom-com playbook with precision, delivering functional chemistry and a premise charming enough to sustain the genre’s expected sense of comfort.

Man vs Baby — Netflix

This one is for fans of Mr. Bean — even though it isn’t him. Rowan Atkinson returns as Mr. Bingley: an unprepared adult forced to survive an unpredictable baby during the holiday season. What could have been a peaceful Christmas turns into a string of small disasters.

It works best when it fully embraces physical comedy and exaggeration, making it ideal background viewing for crowded homes.

All I Need for Christmas — Netflix

A musician facing a professional crisis finds, during Christmas, a chance for personal and emotional reconnection when she crosses paths with someone who initially seems like her opposite.

The production leans into a warm tone and the idea of new beginnings as simple but effective emotional engines.

A Merry Little Ex-Christmas — Netflix

Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson carry a predictable yet unmistakably Christmas-themed story. Ex-relationships, old resentments, and a holiday that forces reunions soon cause any attempt at civility to collapse.

It’s a film that understands that the past is never fully resolved — especially on symbolic dates.

Champagne Problems — Netflix

One of the titles leading the Top 10 since November, the film follows an American executive who travels to France to close a major business deal before Christmas, only to become entangled in professional and emotional dilemmas.

Less sugary than most, it opts for gentle melancholy and adult conflicts, using Christmas more as a backdrop than as a solution.

Jingle Bell Heist — Netflix

Two frustrated workers plan a heist on Christmas Eve, when no one seems to be paying attention. Full of twists, the film swaps romance for a caper structure, offering a playful variation on the Christmas genre.

The Sound of Music — Disney+

Not a Christmas film — but few works hold such a fixed place in the collective imagination of the end-of-year season. In 2025, the musical turns 60 and continues to cross generations as an emotional December ritual.

Music, family, childhood, and warmth make it a tradition that resists both time and trends.

In the end, the logic remains the same: Christmas films don’t need to be memorable to be important. They just need to be there — as background noise, as an emotional pause, as the quiet promise that, for a few hours, everything will turn out fine. In 2025, that is more than enough.

Merry Christmas!