I figured, what better way to spend a Friday evening than renting some films by Hong Kong commercial cinema god Tsui Hark.

I should state in advance that, for the longest time, I wasn’t exactly enamored with the guy’s work. “Double Team:” saw it a few months ago on NBC for free. Didn’t have to pay for it, but still felt I got the bad end of the bargain. A few months prior, while I was visiting Miami, USA showed “Knock-Off.” As Hong Kong films go, I guess there have been worse. But I found myself burning a candle for Paul Sorvino’s career afterward.

Once upon a time in BAM Cinemas, there was a showing of “Once Upon a Time in China,” Hark’s 1991 martial arts flick. I looked up reviews prior to seeing it. Village Voice tossed raves like confetti. Various critics called it “a masterpiece,” “a classic,” “better than ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.’” So I went to see “Once Upon a Time…” It was not better than “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” On the contrary, I found it near incoherent—a collection of action sequences barely connected by plot. Also, it’s terribly conventional. Hark’s movie is replete with the annoying comic relief elements of most martial arts films. Finally, the fight scenes lack the grace of Ang Lee’s film, and they kept cueing this annoying snake flute tune—the “Wong Fei-Hung” theme song, I guess—whenever the hero showed up to kick something. The whole enterprise felt like a bad TV movie.

The only other Tsui Hark film I saw afterward was “The Chinese Feast.” I really did not mind that one. It had great cinematography, giant fish slapstick, and a motorcycle chase choreographed to “La Traviata.” That’s something only an above-average filmmaker would envision. After seeing “The Chinese Feast,” I actually started to think “Hmm. Maybe this Tsui Hark guy isn’t the complete hack I thought he was.” “Time and Tide” convinced me he wasn’t. I don’t know if Hark edits his own movies, but he makes Michael Bay and Baz Luhrmann’s films look like the opening shot from Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” And I’m almost certain Hark was trying to tell us something with “Time and Tide.” Damned if I can decipher it, but the film is way too ambitious to be just another make-a-buck quickie.

So against all odds, Hark has managed to join the select pantheon of directors whose work I follow religiously. The list includes such iconoclasts as Scorcese, Jeunet, Kar-Wai, Lynch, Wes Anderson, and others. Such devotion brought me to my local video store last night, where I rented sequels to some of the more popular (or is it populist?) Hark movies.

“A Better Tomorrow 3” is the third in the series Hark produced, but John Woo directed. Meanwhile, “Once Upon a Time… 2” continues the adventures of Wong Fei-Hung, China’s Captain America.