"Katherine Bigelow's direction of The Hurt Locker is masterful and might very well place her back where she belongs, at the top of anyone’s list looking for a top-shelf action director. But that’s not enough to save the film...."
What Nolte should have written is "Katherine Bigelow's direction of The Hurt Locker is masterly," not masterful.
Here's why: Masterly means "done with the skill of a master"; masterful means "done with the domineering authority of one in charge" (like a slave master or a headmaster).
Nolte's mistake is very common--as is the one that L. Brent Bozell III makes in the following sentence to his open letter to Oliver Stone:
"Many years ago, when Bill Maher’s comedy show was hosted by Comedy Central and he was funny, his formula for success was truly unique."
The adverb truly, like most adverbs used to modify unique, is unnecessary here. If Maher's Comedy Central show was, in fact, unique (i.e., one of a kind), simply calling it unique would have been enough: No one reading Bozell's open letter would've stopped at the word to ask whether he meant "truly" unique. Also, to modify a word with "truly" implies that it can also be modified with "falsely" or some other adverb suggesting deception or error.
To Bozell's credit, his "unique" error is unique. Most writers and speakers who needlessly modify unique do so with intensifiers ("really," "very"), as if there are degrees of "one-of-a-kindness."
Bozell's error is also unique in that it's the only one in an otherwise well-written piece: http://www.mrc.org/bozellcolumns/columns/2009/20090702051952.aspx.
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