When you own a Cineworld Unlimited Card…you go see a lot of films that you wouldn’t normally pay to sit through. In other words, you would go see any old shit, just because it was effectively free (I am currently 4 months into 9 free months from recommending friends to the Unlimited Card)

In these last few days, I have been to see Avengers: Infinity War….twice. Massive scale, big action, explosions, larger than life everything……..and I could still hear people enjoying that whilst I sat in a relatively quiet, small screen, watching the quaint tale of Lily James’ Juliet Ashton, a writer who stumbles across a book club which was started accidentally on the island of Guernsey during the Nazi occupation. The story intrigues her as she begins a little bit of “You’ve Got Mail” back and forth with Dawsey Adams (played by Michiel Huisman who is portraying the sexiest pig farmer ever to grace the earth….literally imagine those fireman calendars…but if a pig farmer in the 40’s published one…this guy would be in it!)

Through this communication, she decides to head off, away from London and her American boyfriend to see what the Literary Society is all about.

There she inevitably meets Dawsey along with a few other islanders (played brilliantly by some amazing English actors), and the story begins to unfold. There’s an underlying story of the missing mother of a girl that Dawsey looks after…she calls him Dad…and then the hints towards the natural and predictable love Juliet and Dawsey begin to experience for one another.

So from the above, and the poster, you get the feel of how the film will play out. And like I say, this is not normally my type of cinematic experience…but I found myself emotionally involved in the characters…funnily enough, way more than I was with any of the characters in the aforementioned Avengers movie…and I left the cinema smiling, even finding I was smiling throughout parts of the film too.

This is what I love about having a Cineworld Card…you uncover little gems of movies you wouldn’t ordinarily see. You stumble upon brilliance.

Mike Newell directs a great cast, most notably Penelope Wilton, who has this uncanny ability to be both sentimental and terrifying in adjacent scenes.

I highly recommend seeing this. It’s not something you necessarily need to see at the cinema, but keep it on your radar for DVD release down the line.

Rating 8/10