Cineflix

What Cineflix offers

Cineflix is a viewing guide. Each of its 173 film pages carries a poster, a still, the story in a paragraph, the year, the running time, the director and the principal cast. Beneath them sits one button, Watch now, which opens JustWatch for the country you select and shows the subscription, rental, purchase and free services that carry the film there. The guide itself holds pages of information, and the playing of every film happens on those official services.

All but two of the films are listed as romances; fifty-eight are also comedies and fifty-seven are also dramas. A hundred and three are Christmas stories, which reflects how the films are made: the holiday season is when most of them are first shown. The other seventy cover the rest of the calendar, with ten winter films set outside the holidays, seventeen for summer, spring and harvest, and a handful for Valentine's Day, Easter and Thanksgiving. Twenty-seven turn on a wedding, twelve on royalty, twelve are set abroad, thirty-six take place in kitchens, bookshops and studios, and twelve are about music and dance.

By year, eighteen films date from 2010 to 2016, fifty-three from 2017 and 2018, thirty-nine from 2019 alone, forty-one from 2020 and 2021, and twenty-two from 2022 onwards. Most run between eighty-four and ninety minutes.

The home page follows the plan of a film index. A wide picture introduces the top-rated film with its rating, year and cast. A row of six posters shows the most popular titles, each with a red year tag. Below, a main column of poster grids covers Christmas, royal romance, summer and spring, weddings, and kitchens and bookshops, while a side column lists every list with its count, the top rated films, and an A to Z of letters.

A first evening

For a first evening, three films recommend themselves, one for each mood of the catalogue. The Christmas film is A Kindhearted Christmas, from 2021, with Jennie Garth and Cameron Mathison. Jamie runs a sightseeing company in the small town of Cooperville, New York. Her late husband Matt loved Christmas and had a habit of doing good turns in secret, and this year Jamie decides to carry the habit on as the town's anonymous Secret Santa. Her kindnesses catch the attention of a morning television host, who arrives determined to find out who is behind them. It is a film about generosity done quietly, and it is the most popular title on Cineflix.

The summer film is Pearl in Paradise, from 2018, with Jill Wagner and Kristoffer Polaha. Alex is a magazine photographer in line for the creative director's chair; Colin is the author of a bestselling novel about a legendary blue pearl. Her editor sends the two of them to Fiji to find the real thing. They travel by boat, on foot and by zip line through waterfalls and villages, argue about maps, and discover that the search matters more than the pearl. The film was shot on location, and the islands are a character in their own right.

The royal film is Royal Matchmaker, also from 2018, with Bethany Joy Lenz and Will Kemp. Kate runs a struggling matchmaking business in New York. A king from a small European country hires her to find a suitable bride for his son, Prince Sebastian, in time for a national celebration. Kate studies the prince with professional care, the better to match him, and that is where her difficulty begins. Filmed in Romania among real palaces, it is the model of the royal romance.

Any one of the three shows what the catalogue is for, and each leads onward: Jamie's story to the hundred other Christmas films, Fiji to A Summer to Remember and Stranded in Paradise, and Kate's prince to Royally Ever After and One Royal Holiday.

Christmas in a small town

A hundred and three films are Christmas stories, and the Christmas guide divides them by kind. The first and largest kind is the visit to a small town. In Love You Like Christmas, from 2016, Maddie, a marketing executive on her way to a client's wedding, has car trouble and finds herself in Christmas Valley, a town devoted to the season, where the owner of a tree farm and his young daughter show her a slower way to live. In Christmas Town, from 2019, Candace Cameron Bure plays a teacher leaving Boston for a new post whose train is held at Grandon Falls, and who finds that the detour is the destination. In Welcome to Christmas, a resort developer scouting a site for a ski lodge slides off the road outside Christmas, Colorado, and is taken in by the town she has come to change.

Small Town Christmas, from 2018, has an author whose first book is the surprise bestseller of the season; the last stop on her tour is Springdale, the hometown of the colleague who once described it to her so vividly that she set her story there. Christmas Around the Corner sends a venture capitalist from New York to Vermont as the guest of a bookshop that has seen better days. 'Tis the Season to be Merry takes a relationship writer, played by Rachael Leigh Cook, to snow-covered Vermont in search of a fresh angle. Christmas In Evergreen: Tidings of Joy brings a sceptical journalist to a town famous for its Christmas spirit, during the search for a long-lost time capsule. In Christmas Island, a snowstorm diverts a pilot's first private flight to an island off Nova Scotia, and in Jingle Bell Princess, mechanical trouble grounds a real princess in a Maine village at lobster-roll season.

A second kind brings someone home. In Poinsettias for Christmas, Ellie returns to help her father deliver tens of thousands of plants from the family farm in time for the town parade, only to find them slow to turn red. In Christmas in Mississippi, a photographer comes back to Gulfport as the town revives its holiday light show for the first time in five years. In A Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas, a hotel manager helps her sister plan a wedding at the Virginia inn their family once owned. In Five Star Christmas, a family schemes to win its father's bed and breakfast a five-star review from a travel critic staying under an assumed name. Rocky Mountain Christmas takes a designer back to her uncle's ranch, Christmas She Wrote sends a newspaper columnist home with her editor in pursuit, and A Maple Valley Christmas is set on a family cattle ranch run by a mother and her daughters.

A third kind saves something. A café is due for demolition in Christmas by Starlight, and the lawyer whose family owns it strikes a bargain with the developer's heir: a week as his legal counsel at seasonal events in exchange for a reprieve. A shopping street is defended in Christmas Tree Lane, a Christmas shop in Sharing Christmas, two family inns in Check Inn to Christmas, a toy store in Best Christmas Party Ever, a childhood house in Christmas on Holly Lane, a school music programme in It's Christmas, Eve, and a town festival in Cranberry Christmas, in which a separated couple agree to appear happily married on national television for the sake of the family business.

More Christmas stories

Other Christmas films depend on a clever idea. A Kiss Before Christmas, with Teri Hatcher and James Denton, lets a decent family man wish his life had gone differently and wake to find that it has. Christmas On My Mind has Lucy wake with a wedding dress in her arms and two years missing from her memory. Unlocking Christmas begins with a mysterious key and a riddle left on two doorsteps. Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas starts with a heartfelt voicemail left on the wrong telephone, and its companion Time for Me to Come Home for Christmas strands a famous singer and a small-town woman in Chicago on the way to Oklahoma. A Fabled Holiday leads two childhood friends to a storybook town, and A Nashville Christmas Carol gives a busy television producer three seasonal visitors.

Travellers thrown together make another reliable story. In Grounded for Christmas, a snowstorm closes Cleveland's airport, the hotels fill, and a pilot reluctantly offers a fellow pilot her parents' spare room. In Cross Country Christmas, two former classmates must reach home by any transport they can find. Hitched for the Holidays and Holiday Date both turn on a pretend partner brought home to satisfy a curious family. Christmas Pen Pals revives the art of the anonymous letter, The Christmas Club begins when two strangers help an elderly woman recover her lost savings, and Christmas Under the Stars pairs a newly unemployed banker with an astronomy teacher at a Christmas tree lot.

The season has room for other traditions too. Double Holiday sets an office party in the week of Hanukkah, as Rebecca balances her family's candle-lighting with the plans of a rival colleague. Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in Chicago in November, and A New Year's Resolution follows a morning-show producer who vows to say yes more often. Britain contributes two very likeable films: This Is Christmas, in which a commuter breaks the unspoken rule of the 8.08 to London by inviting his whole carriage to a party, and Click & Collect, a comedy with Stephen Merchant about two neighbours driving the length of England on Christmas Eve to collect a toy unicorn.

Royal romance

Twelve films involve a crown, and the royal guide lists them. The pattern is as old as fairy tales and wears well: an ordinary American and a prince or princess from a small invented kingdom, each learning something from the other. In Royally Ever After, Sara, a teacher from New Jersey, accepts her boyfriend Daniel's proposal and then learns that he is the heir to a European throne whose parents have other plans. In Royal Hearts, a Montana rancher played by James Brolin inherits the throne of a distant country and takes his sceptical daughter with him. A Winter Princess hides a princess on the staff of a ski resort, where she plans the Snow Ball with the owner's brother.

Christmas and royalty combine happily. One Royal Holiday, from 2020, stars two Broadway singers, Laura Osnes and Aaron Tveit: Anna gives shelter to a mother and son stranded by a blizzard and learns that they are the queen and prince of Galwick. A Royal Queens Christmas brings a prince to the New York borough of Queens to help with a children's Christmas show. The Royal Nanny sends an intelligence officer under cover into a royal nursery. Picture Perfect Royal Christmas takes a photographer's assistant to the kingdom of Pantrea in her employer's place, and A Christmas Princess gives a struggling New York chef the chance to cater a royal ball. Christmas at Castle Hart, with Lacey Chabert, is set in Ireland, where an American tracing her family is mistaken for an event planner and hired by the Earl of Glaslough. In A Glenbrooke Christmas, it is the heroine who has the fortune, and who hides it.

Weddings and proposals

Twenty-seven films turn on a wedding, and the weddings guide sorts them. Some heroines plan weddings for a living. Madeline, the bridal boutique owner of Marry Me at Christmas, is organising a perfect winter ceremony when she finds herself drawn to the bride's brother, a film star. The planner of Twinkle All the Way must work with the co-owner of a house-lighting company. Jess, in From Friend to Fiancé, is asked by her oldest friend to arrange his marriage to the girl who made her schooldays difficult. The Perfect Bride is set at a bridal boot camp that mixes fitness with counselling, and Matching Hearts gives a matchmaker a client who is sure that staying single is the secret of success.

Other films reunite old sweethearts. In The Wedding March, with Jack Wagner and Josie Bissett, a bride discovers that the singer booked for her wedding is the man she loved at college. Wedding Bells makes a best man and a maid of honour, two busy people with little in common, save a country inn. The Christmas Cottage brings two former partners together to decorate a honeymoon cottage said to bring lasting love to those who stay there. Two Tickets to Paradise sends two strangers, each left at the altar on the same day, on their separate honeymoons to the same Hawaiian resort. Christmas Waltz, from 2020, with Lacey Chabert and the dancer Will Kemp, begins when Avery's storybook wedding is called off and she decides to take the dance lessons anyway.

The proposals have their own charm. One Winter Weekend and its sequel One Winter Proposal follow a magazine writer and a snowboard designer from a double-booked chalet to a jewellery box found in a coat pocket. Marrying Mr. Darcy continues a modern Jane Austen story as a schoolteacher's small autumn wedding grows larger by the week. It Was Always You unsettles an engagement when the groom's free-spirited brother comes home. The Christmas Ring sends a reporter in search of the love story behind an antique ring, and Double Wedding, from 2010, stars the twins Tia and Tamera Mowry as sisters who discover they have been seeing the same man.

Winter, spring, summer and harvest

The films outside the holidays follow the calendar, and two guides cover them: the winter guide and the summer guide. Winter belongs to ice and snow. Love on Ice gives a figure skater of twenty-seven, considered past her best, a young coach who believes she has one more season in her. Taking a Shot at Love has a former ballet dancer use her training to help an injured hockey star recover. Checkin' It Twice trades a journeyman player to a new town. Winter in Vail, with Lacey Chabert and Tyler Hynes, begins when an event planner inherits a chalet in Colorado and ends with a festival of apple strudel. Love on Iceland reunites college friends on a spontaneous trip, and SnowComing brings a librarian home for her father's last game as a football coach.

Spring and summer move outdoors. True Love Blooms sets an urban gardener against the developer who has bought her community plot. Easter Under Wraps sends the daughter of a chocolate family to work unrecognised on her own factory floor. A Summer Romance is set on a Montana ranch, Valentine Ever After on a Wyoming one. Love at the Shore gives a novelist with a deadline a noisy surfer for a neighbour; Like Cats & Dogs books a cat person and a dog person into the same beach house; Love at Sea takes place on a Caribbean cruise, and Sailing Into Love on a threatened island. Campfire Kiss takes a protective mother and her teenage son camping. Autumn brings Harvest Love, on a pear farm in Washington State, and Pumpkin Pie Wars, in which the children of two feuding bakers are entered against each other in the county bake-off.

Romance abroad

Twelve films are set abroad, and the travel guide maps them. Rome in Love, from 2019, was filmed in the city itself. Amelia, an unknown actress from the American Midwest, wins the lead in a new version of Roman Holiday, and a journalist is assigned to write her profile. They visit the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and a kitchen where she learns to make pasta, and the film borrows a little of the charm of the classic it honours. Paris, Wine & Romance takes the new owner of an Oregon winery to a competition in Paris, where her rival is the heir to a great French house. Paris Christmas Waltz pairs an amateur with a professional dancer for a contest in the French capital.

Britain and Ireland are popular destinations. Jolly Good Christmas follows an American architect in London who hires a personal shopper to find the perfect gift, and is led all over the city. A Merry Scottish Christmas, from 2023, with Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf, brings an estranged brother and sister to a Scottish castle, where their mother has news for them. The South Pacific appears twice more: A Summer to Remember takes a doctor and her teenage daughter to Fiji, and Stranded in Paradise keeps a businesswoman in Puerto Rico through a tropical storm.

Kitchens, bookshops and studios

Thirty-six films are set where people work, and the kitchens and bookshops guide introduces them. Food comes first. The Perfect Catch has a single mother reinvent her struggling diner when her high-school sweetheart, now a baseball star, comes home. The Secret Ingredient invites a small-town baker to a Valentine's Day baking contest in New York, where another contestant is her former fiancé. Cooking with Love puts a cheerful producer in charge of a children's cooking programme and a temperamental chef. My Secret Valentine is set at a family winery, Merry & Bright at a candy-cane factory, and Love Struck Café at a lakeside coffee shop.

Writers are everywhere in these films. The Mistletoe Inn sends an aspiring romance novelist to a writers' retreat in Vermont. Winter Love Story puts a new author on a book tour with an established one. All for Love pairs a romance novelist with a Navy man who is to advise her on her next hero. Love by the Book is set in a bookshop, Grace gives a famous author with writer's block an unusual assistant, and Dear Christmas, with Melissa Joan Hart and Jason Priestley, concerns the host of a podcast about holiday love stories who has yet to find one of her own.

Television and radio supply the rest. Good Morning Christmas! sends two morning-show hosts who rarely agree on air to broadcast together from a festive town. Love in Store sets two shopping-channel presenters in competition for the same promotion. With Love, Christmas has two advertising colleagues pitching rival campaigns, Falling for You is set at a small-town radio station, and On the 12th Date of Christmas has two game designers build a city-wide scavenger hunt. Flip That Romance puts rival house renovators to work on the two halves of one duplex.

Music and dance

Twelve films sing or dance, and the music and dance guide lists them. The Mistle-Tones, from 2012, is the liveliest: Holly, played by Tia Mowry, is turned down by the Christmas singing group her late mother founded, so she forms a group of her own from her office colleagues and challenges the reigning queen, played by Tori Spelling, at the shopping-mall contest. Holiday Harmony strands a young singer in a small Oklahoma town two weeks before a big audition, where she is put in charge of the children's Christmas show. A Song for Christmas has a pop star walk off her tour bus and take shelter with a family of dairy farmers. Chateau Christmas reunites a concert pianist with the cellist she once loved, and A Christmas Love Story stars the Broadway soprano Kristin Chenoweth as the director of a youth choir.

Comedy and family viewing

The comedy guide picks out the films with the lightest touch, among them Catch Me If You Claus, in which a news presenter finds a man in a red suit in her house who says he is Santa's son, and Six Degrees of Santa, about a gift that travels from hand to hand. The family viewing guide explains why the whole shelf suits a shared sofa, and points to the films with children at their centre: Wrapped Up In Christmas, in which eight-year-old Molly asks the mall Santa to find a boyfriend for her aunt; Enchanted Christmas, in which a designer and her daughter return to Santa Fe; The Santa Squad, in which an art teacher helps a widowed father and his two girls; and Love Under the Stars, in which a graduate student befriends a quiet girl and her father. Animal lovers have A Very Corgi Christmas, The Nine Kittens of Christmas and Love and Sunshine, about a retired military dog and the two people who each feel she is theirs.

Familiar faces

Part of the comfort of these films is their company of players, and the familiar faces guide follows the busiest of them. Lacey Chabert, who began as a child actress and has become the best-known face of the form, stars in seven films here: Christmas Waltz, Winter in Vail, Moonlight in Vermont, in which a New York property broker retreats to her family's inn and invents a boyfriend, My Secret Valentine, Christmas at Castle Hart, A Merry Scottish Christmas and Haul Out the Holly: Lit Up, a comedy about a street where the neighbours take their decorations very seriously indeed.

Andrew W. Walker appears ten times, more than anyone else on Cineflix. He is the baseball player of The Perfect Catch, the coach of Love on Ice, the consultant mistaken for a blind date in Merry & Bright, the lodger of My Secret Valentine and the air traffic controller of Christmas Island, and he appears in Christmas On My Mind, Love Struck Café, Christmas Tree Lane, My Christmas Family Tree and A Maple Valley Christmas. Tyler Hynes and Ryan Paevey have eight films each. Hynes is at his best as the free-spirited brother of It Was Always You and the rival renovator of Flip That Romance; Paevey as the developer who falls for a ranch in A Summer Romance, the farm manager of Harvest Love and Mr Darcy himself in Marrying Mr. Darcy.

Danica McKellar, known to an earlier audience from The Wonder Years and also a published mathematics author, has seven films, among them Coming Home for Christmas, set on a Virginia estate, Christmas at Dollywood, in which Dolly Parton appears as herself, and You, Me and the Christmas Trees, in which she plays an expert in evergreens. Taylor Cole, Wes Brown, Steve Lund and Kevin McGarry have five each. Cole leads the two One Winter films and Unlocking Christmas; Brown appears in Christmas in Mississippi and Check Inn to Christmas; Lund is the bored heir mistaken for a parking attendant in Secret Millionaire; and McGarry plays opposite a pop star in A Song for Christmas and an ex in Christmas Scavenger Hunt.

Many of the leads will be known from other work. Rachael Leigh Cook, Alicia Witt, Autumn Reeser, Jen Lilley, Merritt Patterson, Erin Krakow, Bethany Joy Lenz, Nikki DeLoach, Alexa PenaVega, who often stars beside her husband Carlos, Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin, Melissa Joan Hart, Catherine Bell, Alison Sweeney and Kristoffer Polaha all return more than once, and guests from an older generation, James Brolin, Sharon Lawrence and Gail O'Grady among them, play the parents and mentors. Part of the pleasure is recognising a face and trying to recall which town it saved last time.

How these films are made

It helps to know a little about where the films come from. Almost all were produced for American cable channels that show a new romance most weekends of the year and a new Christmas film on most evenings from late October. They are filmed quickly, usually in fifteen days or so, and more often than might be guessed in Canada, where the towns around Vancouver and in Ontario and Manitoba stand in for Vermont, Colorado and Montana. A Christmas film is very likely to have been shot in high summer, with the cast in scarves and the snow brought in by lorry.

The stories follow a pattern that viewers know and enjoy. There is a meeting in the first ten minutes, a shared task by the half hour, a misunderstanding about twenty minutes from the end, and a reconciliation in falling snow or at a festival. The pleasure lies in the variations: which trade the heroine follows, which tradition the town keeps, which small secret is waiting to be told. Bakeries, inns, tree farms, bookshops and family businesses of every sort recur because they give two people a reason to work side by side.

Within that pattern the films have grown more varied over the fifteen years covered here. The earliest on Cineflix, such as Double Wedding and Fairfield Road, are simple and sunny. By 2017 and 2018, the busiest years, production values had risen and location shooting had begun, in Fiji for Pearl in Paradise and Romania for the royal films. The most recent titles travel further still, to Rome, Paris, Scotland and Iceland, and try new ideas: time travel in Rip in Time, in which an organic farmer meets a man who says he comes from 1787; a football club's supporters in Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story; and office life after the pandemic in Return to Office, where two colleagues who share a desk on different days fall for each other through notes.

The years guide sets the whole catalogue along this timeline, and each period has its own list.

Ten double bills

Because the films are short, two fit comfortably into one evening, and choosing a pair is half the fun. Here are ten that work well together. For skaters, Love on Ice and A Snow Capped Christmas, in which an injured figure skater recovers in the mountains beside a former hockey player and his daughter. For bakers, Pumpkin Pie Wars and The Secret Ingredient. For dancers, Christmas Waltz and Paris Christmas Waltz, which share a director's eye for a ballroom and a real dancer as leading man. For stargazers, Christmas Under the Stars and One Starry Christmas, in which an astronomy lecturer meets a cowboy on the bus home.

For readers, The Mistletoe Inn and Small Town Christmas. For those who like a castle, Christmas at Castle Hart and A Merry Scottish Christmas. For a snowed-in evening, Grounded for Christmas and Cross Country Christmas. For a film about films, Rome in Love and Moonlight in Vermont. For secret identities, Secret Millionaire and Easter Under Wraps, in which the wealthy party is the one in disguise. And for a pair with songs, The Mistle-Tones and One Royal Holiday, whose leads are both stars of the musical stage.

A note on tone

Newcomers sometimes ask what to expect, and the honest answer is: kindness. These are films in which neighbours bring casseroles, rivals turn out to be decent, and the worst thing that happens is a missed flight or a burnt batch of biscuits. The business rival wants the bakery, and by the last reel he would rather have the baker's good opinion. The city visitor arrives with a telephone in each hand and leaves having learned to decorate a tree. Losses are acknowledged, since several heroines and heroes are widowed or raising children alone, and the films treat those histories with tact; the story is always about what comes next.

That steadiness is the reason families watch them together. A grandmother and a twelve-year-old can sit through the same ninety minutes with equal comfort, and both will have guessed the ending by the first commercial break, which is part of the pleasure. The films are best enjoyed as one enjoys a favourite seasonal recipe: for the familiar taste, and for the small differences in how each cook prepares it.

It is also why the settings matter so much. A town called Christmas Valley or Evergreen, an inn with a fire in every grate, a square with a bandstand and a tree-lighting at dusk: these are places that viewers come to know as well as the characters. Several towns recur across films, and so do traditions such as the scavenger hunt, the gingerbread contest and the pageant directed at the last minute by a visiting stranger. Christmas Scavenger Hunt, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, in which the mayors of two neighbouring towns compete for a decorating prize, and Christmas at Dollywood each build a whole story on one such custom.

Choosing by setting

A simple way to choose is to start from where you would like to spend the evening. For mountains and snow, pick from Winter in Vail, Rocky Mountain Christmas and Christmas Reservations. For the coast, Love at the Shore, Sailing Into Love and Christmas in Mississippi. For farms and ranches, Harvest Love, A Maple Valley Christmas, Poinsettias for Christmas and You, Me and the Christmas Trees. For a big city, A Royal Queens Christmas, Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade and Best Christmas Party Ever. For a country house, Coming Home for Christmas and Christmas with the Darlings. And for somewhere far away, the travel list will take you to Rome, Paris, London, the Scottish Highlands, Iceland or Fiji in a single evening.

Another way is to choose by the work the characters do, since these films take a real interest in how people earn a living. Teachers lead Christmas Town and Playing Cupid; doctors and nurses A Summer to Remember and Love Takes Flight; photographers Pearl in Paradise, Christmas in Mississippi and Picture a Perfect Christmas; architects and designers Enchanted Christmas, Jolly Good Christmas and Finding Love in Mountain View; pilots Grounded for Christmas and Christmas Island; and event planners, the profession these films love best, at least a dozen titles from Four Christmases and a Wedding to Christmas at Dollywood. Whatever the trade, the film will show it as worth doing well, which is a quiet theme of the whole catalogue.

A third way is to choose by how the couple meet. They may be old flames, as in The Christmas Cottage, Chateau Christmas and SnowComing; rivals, as in Flip That Romance and Love in Store; strangers thrown together by weather, as in Christmas Island; or friends who have overlooked each other for years, as in From Friend to Fiancé and A Very Merry Bridesmaid, where a thirtieth birthday on Christmas Eve finally gets the attention it deserves. Each kind of meeting sets a different rhythm, and most viewers soon find they have a favourite.

More to discover

Beyond the main shelves are films that fit several lists at once and are easy to miss. After the Storm follows a young woman rebuilding her family home and her community after a hurricane. Same Time Next Week brings together two people, each widowed, over a list of adventures one of them has promised to complete. Second Chances, with Alison Sweeney, is set around a fire station and an emergency call centre, where a single mother rents a room to an injured firefighter. Love Takes Flight pairs a hospital director with a rescue helicopter pilot, and A Welcome Home Christmas with an army veteran organising a toy drive.

Several films are about finding family. In My Christmas Family Tree, a DNA test introduces Vanessa to relatives she has only just learned of, and she spends Christmas among them. Finding Love in Mountain View makes an architect the guardian of her cousin's children. Coyote Creek Christmas and Picture a Perfect Christmas both involve a visiting father or uncle and a small boy who needs minding. Love, of Course follows a mother who takes a job at her daughter's college, and Playing Cupid is set in a middle school where a pupil's matchmaking business brings together her father and her teacher.

Others stand out for their setting. Same Time, Next Christmas, with Lea Michele, returns each December to the same Hawaiian resort, where two families have always holidayed together. Enchanted Christmas is set among the adobe buildings and lantern-lit streets of Santa Fe. Christmas Reservations takes place at a ski lodge where every guest has a story, and Christmas with the Darlings in the mansion of a wealthy family whose orphaned nieces and nephew arrive for the holidays. The Spruces and the Pines retells Romeo and Juliet between two rival Christmas-tree lots, with a happier ending, and Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen borrows from Jane Austen for the story of two party-planning sisters and a toy company chief with little love for tinsel.

And a few are simply well made. Beauty and the Billionaire, Romance in Style, in which a designer persuades a magazine publisher to feature fashion for every figure, If I Only Had Christmas, a seasonal nod to The Wizard of Oz, Jingle Around the Clock, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, in which a town stages a courtroom play about who really wrote the famous poem, and Coupled Up for Christmas all reward a look.

Search, lists and My List

The search field in the header answers as you type and sets aside filler words such as watch, online and free, so a few letters of a title are enough. Since so many titles here begin with Christmas, Love or A, the search is the quickest route to a film whose name is half remembered. The finding titles page describes the search, the lists and the A to Z, which sets out all 173 films in alphabetical order.

Eighteen lists divide the catalogue. Five follow the years, from 2010 to 2016 through to 2022 onwards. Eleven follow kind or setting: Christmas, romance, comedy, drama, royal romance, winter, summer and spring, weddings, travel, kitchens and bookshops, and music and dance. Top rated holds the thirty-seven films that viewers have scored highest, and All titles holds everything. A film may sit in several lists at once, so Christmas at Castle Hart is found under Christmas, royal romance, travel and 2020 and 2021 alike.

My List is your queue for cosy evenings. Each film page carries an Add to My List button, and the red My List button in the header opens the queue as a grid of posters. It lives in the browser on your own device and waits there for your next evening in, and the list page can export it to a file for another device. The My List page gives the steps, and the how to watch page explains the path from a title to a service.

A film page on Cineflix is laid out for a quick decision: the still and poster first, then the year, running time and genres, the story in a paragraph, the director and cast, and finally the country selector with its Watch now button. Fifteen countries are offered, the United States and Canada first among them, and the choice is remembered for the next film.

A year of feel-good films

These feel-good films suit the calendar, so a plan by season works well. In January and February, take the winter list: Love on Ice, Winter in Vail and, for Valentine's Day, My Secret Valentine or Matching Hearts. In spring, True Love Blooms and Easter Under Wraps, then a royal weekend with Royal Matchmaker and Royally Ever After. For summer, travel: Pearl in Paradise, Rome in Love and Love at the Shore. September and October belong to Harvest Love and Pumpkin Pie Wars, and November to Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade. That leaves December and a hundred and three Christmas films, which is roughly three for every evening of Advent. Start with A Kindhearted Christmas, Christmas Waltz and The Mistle-Tones, and let the lists do the rest.

Questions and answers

Questions