Look, I don’t want to sound like this self-righteous prick, but the fact of the matter is there have been a lot of journalists who have broken George Orwell’s first Rule For Effective Writing, which states: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

Having read several reviews of The Master, I have become very used to seeing variations of the same crap pun. Admittedly much of the blame here must lie with sub-editors as much as anyone else, but still.

• “The Master is simply masterful” – LA Times
• “The Master: it’s masterful stuff” – Daily Star
• “Masterful cinema” – The Sun
• “The very masterful Master” – Huffington Post
• “The Master not entirely masterful” – National Review
• “The Master: a masterful not-quite masterpiece” – Bloodshot Eye (bonus points for both variations!)
• “A less than masterful Master” – Washington Examiner
• “The Master is masterful” – Seattle Times
• “The Master is a masterful dissection of cult” – St Louis Post
• “Philip Seymour Hoffman is masterful” – Cleveland.com
  
• “Master performances masterful, story not so much” – Atascadero News
• “The Master less than masterful” – CBS St Louis
• “The Master is itself masterful” – FlickFeast
• “The Master is (yes, I’m gonna say it) masterful filmmaking” – Yahoo!
• “Obvious pun notwithstanding, it’s truly masterful work.” – Examiner.com

The Master is out on limited release in the UK today. Be sure to bring a thesaurus to your screening.

Previously in overly-pedantic dissections of lazy wordplay in film journalism:  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; The Hangover Part II.