Because of You (2000) review

Thank heavens Murakami is a potent novelist, because he's not a good filmmaker. This story, which might have worked on the page, comes across as clunky on-screen, as a Japanese woman who was taught how to dance by a Cuban-American G.I. tracks him down in NYC, discovers he's dying of AIDS and volunteers to drive him to Miami so he can die. Murakami's novels Almost Transparent Blue and Coin Locker Babies, though not Faulkner, are trashy, fun, and quite mesmerizing - Piercing, which I read in the Summer of 2007, is a transgressive treat - but he's way out of his element here (and in multiple ways), harbored further by lame dialogue and acting straight out of community theater.