The 30 Oscar contenders that critics loved the most

As past awards shows have proven, big numbers at the box office don't always translate to film quality or critical acclaim.

With the 2016 Academy Awards fast approaching - nominations are announced January 14 and trophies are handed out February 28 - we decided to take a look at the films with the best chances of taking home an Oscar, according to critics' reviews.

To determine the ranking, we found the highest-rated movies eligible for the 2016 Academy Awards on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, two websites that rate movies based on aggregated critic reviews. We calculated the geometric mean of the two scores to determine a final score for each movie. (We didn't consider movies that didn't have at least 15 critic reviews on each website).

Some movies getting major awards buzz - like "The Revenant" - don't crack this list because of divided critical reception.

Read on to see which Oscar-eligible films critics loved the most from the past year.