I’ve had the misfortune of choosing US as the first time I’d listened to the commentary. Very few directors have been able to rise to the bar.
Siger’s commentary on X-men is very good, too. I think he has the same fellow with him on both.
The Blair Witch Project had a good commentary; because of the unorthodox production style some of the behind-the-scenes anecdotes are more interesting than the movie itself. And I liked the movie.
I enjoyed Cameron Crowe’s commentary on “Almost Famous” a lot. FWIW.
Cannibal! the Musical; the director and cast get drunk and critique the movie…
Modern Vampires; the commentary was even mor fun than the movie, and the movie was quite fun in a B-Movie kind of way
Richard Elfman (Director) and Casper Van Dien (lead vampire) are viewing a scene where Kim Cattral’s character hits Van Dien’s character, lands about 3 blows…
CVD “that’s IT??!?!, that’s all you used, she beat the shit out of me in that take!!”
Futurama Season 3;
The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz; Billy West has Zoidberg do commentary
A Pharaoh to remember; Billy as Fry, John DiMaggio as Bender in the commentary (the Professor drops in as well)
UHF;
Wierd Al has a lot of fun in his commentary, other actors “drop in”…
the scene with Emo Phillips running the circular saw is playing;
Al on commentary; Oh look, there’s Emo Phillips, i wonder where he is now
Emo; I’m right behind you!
Al; <yelps, startled>
near the end of the movie Al calls up Victoria Jackson
The best commentaries of all are John Carpenter paired off with Kurt Russell. Two guys who’ve been friends for 25 years, almost certainly half-cut and having a great time while still remaining informative and amusing.
I got through about half of “Big Trouble in Little China’s” commentary, and I loved the movie. I think what did it for me was when Russell and Carpenter were talking about their kids.
Some of the commentarys would come off much better if they had someone conducting an interview. With a cattle prod handy to keep 'em in line.
“Pirates of the Caribbean”: the Knightly/Davenport commentary was pretty good but not very informative. They josh each other and he tosses off witty deadpan lines that the English do so well.
The commentary with the writers was more interesting to me, because they discussed how the drafts of the script changed (originally, Davenport’s character was supposed to turn pirate!). They also mentioned how the actor who played Barbosa worked for a long time with the writers on his speech with Knightly’s character aboard the pirate ship, making sure each line flowed right and reflected his character properly. Sounds agonizing to go through, but they didn’t seem upset about it.
I’ve said it before, but Ebert’s “Casablanca” commentary was excellent. Lots of information about the making of the movie (a lot of which I knew), but he also went into how the movie was shot. Great trivia.