The 2021 Sundance Film Festival is winding down, with winners scheduled to be announced Friday. The festival was held virtually for the second consecutive year with movie lovers from all over the world able to watch films from their homes.

One of the premiere festivals for independent cinema, Sundance’s impressive resume of films has included “Reservoir Dogs,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Promising Young Woman” and last year’s dramatic winner, “CODA.”

Once again, the festival has featured plenty of quality. Here are a few of the narrative features that stood out during the first half of the festival.

“Cha Cha Real Smooth” (grade A-) is the best of the bunch. The second film from writer/director Cooper Raiff is a delightful crowd-pleaser that takes the audience on an emotional journey that transcends genre boundaries.

Raiff also stars as Andrew, a recent college graduate trying to figure out what’s next in his life. Andrew takes a job as a bar mitzvah party starter and meets an older woman named Domino (Dakota Johnson in one of the best performances of her career) and her autistic daughter (Vanessa Burghardt).

“Cha Cha” could have taken the easy path and worked just fine as a romantic comedy, but Raiff’s script smartly takes the film in other directions. This is a filmmaker not afraid to push the boundaries and create something that continually surprises its audience in delightful ways.

“Fresh” (B+) is another film that could have easily went one way before veering into something else – a wild slice of horror from director Mimi Cave that features a go-for-broke performance by Sebastian Stan.

In “Fresh,” Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Noa, a young woman who is stuck in a dating rut until she meets Steve (Stan) in a grocery. Noa and Steve share an immediate attraction and begin a relationship. She accepts when Steve invites Noa on a romantic getaway, but the trip takes a turn when she discovers he has been hiding a dark secret.

To say anything else would be an injustice to Cave and screenwriter Lauryn Kahn, who takes a film about the perils of dating and takes it to unimaginable levels of horror. The tension slowly builds to a roaring boil with a final act that is pretty intense (even if it gets a little close to coming off the rails).

“Emily the Criminal” (B) is one of those effective low-key thrillers that really immerses you in the world and makes you care about the characters.

Aubrey Plaza stars as Emily, a young woman buried in student loans who is struggling to make ends meet. Emily finds a way to make some quick cash, posing as a dummy shopper in a credit card scam. What starts out as one job quickly spirals into more, with Emily pulled into the Los Angeles criminal underworld.

Writer/director John Patton Ford has crafted a really tense thriller that has a lot to say about modern-day capitalism. The tension builds as Emily gets deeper down the rabbit hole, with the stakes constantly being raised.

But it’s Plaza who provides the strength of “Emily the Criminal” with a mesmerizing performance. This is a side of Plaza we haven’t seen before – a tough vulnerability that really brings Emily to life. Plaza continues to take chances as an actress and “Emily the Criminal” continues her evolution from comedy to more dramatic roles. I look forward to seeing that evolution continue.