This is called the persistence of vision. Persistence of vision accounts for our failure to notice that a motion picture screen is dark about half the time, and that a television image is just one bright, fast, little dot sweeping the screen. Each frame is shown three times during this period. The eye retains the image of each frame long enough to give us the illusion of smooth motion. I doubt they realized the truth of their words.
Life is like a movie because, like a movie, life is an illusion of continuity.
G-d didn't just create the world once. He re- creates it every split second. Every second is a separate and distinct creation. It just looks like a continuous whole. When a craftsman makes an artifact, from the moment of its completion that artifact becomes independent of its creator.