In many ways, the mainstream taste is the least interesting to write about. It falls between the other two tastes on most dimensions and is the taste that most closely resembles the master list. Video guides and other books aimed at a mass audience often reflect a mainstream taste.
The top-100 mainstream films do include a few silent films, unlike the top-100 popular films. However, there are not as many silent films among the top-100 mainstream films as among the top-100 highbrow films. The top-100-mainstream films include more films from the 1980s and 1990s than the top-100 highbrow films do, but not as many as the top-100 popular films do.
The top-100 mainstream films include more genre films than do the top-100 highbrow films but fewer genre films than the top-100 popular films. The most noticeable instance in which the top-100 mainstream films differ from both the top-100 popular films and the top-100 highbrow films is that the top-100 mainstream films contain nearly as many family, music(al) and western films as the top 100 from the other tastes combined.
The top-100 mainstream films include only one film in a language other than English--The Seven Samurai (1954). Often, non-English language films are viewed as being just one genre rather than representing the work of speakers of every language spoken on this planet other than English.