…it looks deliberate to me. Its so easy to switch focus-point in camera that it looks like a deliberate stylistic choice to help guide the eye in the direction they want us to look. As Rey’s head swings towards Luke the compression naturally makes our eyes swing left, then as it focuses on Rey we “pull back” slightly and that brings our eye back onto her. Its such a quick moment that that subtle moment stops us from lingering on either subject.
The same with the next scene. As it compresses inwards our eyes are naturally drawn to the left, onto Rey. So my WAG is it was all done in post production on purpose. I’m just starting to learn the art of video editing in premiere. So I’m gonna try and duplicate this tomorrow. Stay tuned.
The second link had an interesting comments about why this may be more common now:
"Anamorphic lenses do that when you pull focus, and it becomes more obvious when you open up the aperture really wide.
Shooting really wide open (as in: below t/2.8 or so) wasn’t very common back in the day, but has become more popular with the advent of even faster lenses, and after people grew accustomed to it during the larger format craze in amateur cameras of the 2010s.
So it’s possible that you have noticed it more in newer films than in older ones."
Stay tuned.