After TIFF: Five Performances I’m Keeping on My The Pour List

The Toronto International Film Festival is over, but awards season is just getting started.

Every September, performances arrive at Venice, Telluride, and TIFF, carrying everything from genuine momentum to carefully manufactured buzz. The real question comes afterward: Which performances will we still be talking about when nominations begin arriving?

After my time at TIFF, there are several performances I saw firsthand that I'm not ready to forget.

Some are already firmly in the awards conversation. Others have more work to do.

Here are five performances that I am monitoring as awards season progresses.

John Malkovich — Wild Horse Nine

Let's start with the performance that already has a trophy behind it.

John Malkovich stars opposite Sam Rockwell in Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, playing Chris, a CIA officer confronting mortality and the consequences of his past.

Malkovich arrived at TIFF having already won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, giving him something most September contenders don't yet have: major awards recognition.

But the award isn't why the performance stays with me.

Malkovich brings vulnerability to a character who could easily have become nothing more than another eccentric creation. His chemistry with Rockwell gives the movie much of its emotional weight.

As the Best Actor field gets more crowded, Malkovich has already given voters a reason to remember him.

The Pour: Best Actor

Jack O'Connell—InkInk

Jack O'Connell is one of the performances I think we should keep talking about.

In Danny Boyle's Ink, O'Connell plays Larry Lamb, the editor hired by Rupert Murdoch to transform The Sun into the newspaper that would reshape British tabloid journalism.

It's a big performance inside a big movie.

O'Connell has to take Lamb from ambitious newspaperman to someone increasingly consumed by the machine he's helping create. Boyle gives him plenty of visual chaos to compete with, but O'Connell remains the center of the film.

The challenge may be the competition.

Best Actor is already crowded, and Ink itself has generated a more complicated response than some of the season's presumed frontrunners.

But awards seasons aren't decided in September.

O'Connell gave me a performance worth remembering, and for now, that's enough to keep him on my list.

The Pour: Best Actor

Sam Rockwell — Wild Horse Nine

John Malkovich may have emerged from Venice with the trophy, but Sam Rockwell shouldn't disappear from the conversation.

Rockwell plays Lee, Chris's fellow CIA officer and longtime friend, and the relationship between the two men is central to Wild Horse Nine.

It's also a reminder that supporting performances don't always need the movie's biggest dramatic moments to work.

Rockwell understands Martin McDonagh's rhythms. They've been here before, and that familiarity allows him to move between dark comedy, frustration, and something considerably more emotional.

If Wild Horse Nine develops support across multiple categories, Rockwell is someone I expect voters to notice.

The Pour: Best Supporting Actor

Guy Pearce—InkInk

Jack O'Connell isn't the only performance in Ink worth watching.

Guy Pearce takes on Rupert Murdoch.

Playing a recognizable living figure creates its own problems. An actor can easily fall into impersonation rather than creating a character.

Pearce presents a Murdoch who serves as both a businessman and an observer—someone who comprehends the power of the creation surrounding him.

The question for Pearce may ultimately be how much awards support develops around Ink as a whole.

If the movie catches on with voters, he could become part of the Supporting Actor conversation.

And if it doesn't?

The performance is still worth discussing.

The Pour: Best Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali—Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother

Mahershala Ali doing an action movie wasn't necessarily what I expected to have on my TIFF bingo card.

But here we are.

In Bassam Tariq's Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother, Ali plays Latif, a widowed father trying to balance his responsibilities to his children with a considerably more complicated past.

Yes, there is action.

But Ali doesn't suddenly stop being the actor who won Oscars for Moonlight and Green Book simply because he's being asked to handle fight choreography.

What interested me was the collision between those two sides of the performance: the physical demands of the genre and the quieter emotional work Ali brings to a father trying to hold his family together.

It remains to be seen whether that will translate into an awards campaign.

But awards coverage shouldn't only be about repeating the five names everyone else already has on a prediction chart.

Sometimes it's about remembering the performance.

I'm remembering this one.

The Pour: Best Actor—watching

THE ONE I'M WATCHING CLOSEST

If I had to identify the performance whose trajectory interests me most right now, it's Jack O'Connell.

This is not an indication that I believe he will be an Oscar nominee in September.

I'm not.

It's because Ink represents exactly the kind of awards-season test that becomes fascinating over the next several months.

Can a performance stand out when the surrounding movie receives mixed reactions?

Does Netflix make O'Connell a priority?

Do critics' groups keep his name alive?

And once Academy voters actually see the film, does the performance become harder to ignore?

Those are the questions worth following.

John Malkovich already has Venice behind him.

Sam Rockwell has a role that could benefit if Wild Horse Nine becomes a major contender.

Guy Pearce has another potential pathway into Ink.

Mahershala Ali reminds us that a performance can deserve attention even if it doesn't fit neatly into the traditional awards-season box.

TIFF gave us the first look.

Now comes the campaign.

And we'll see which performances are still standing when the nominations arrive.