2001: A Space Odyssey (film) company, and care was taken that the film would be sufficiently "British" to qualify for the Eady Levy, a UK tax on box-office receipts. The film received mixed reactions from critics and audiences upon its release, but garnered a cult following and became the highest-grossing North American film of 1968. It was nominated for four Academy Awards; Kubrick received one for his direction of visual effects. A sequel, "", directed by Peter Hyams, was released in 1984. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was deemed
2001: A Space Odyssey (film) artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines ... and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans ... "2001", for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-"Spartacus" and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story." Eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. deemed the film "morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long ... a film out of control". In a 2001 review the BBC said that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon