Freeway is a very twisted black comic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. It’s very good.
Also, the big bad wolf is Jack Bauer. How cool is that?
Freeway, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland is a cool and interesting take on Little Red Riding Hood (in a modern, urban setting with a serial killer as the “wolf”), and features a great, early performance from Reese Witherspoon.
Crap, ninja-ed.
That reminds me of another movie about a selkie – John Sayles’ The Secret of Roan Inish.
True, but the nature of their magical elements and having child protagonists do make them somewhat fairytale-like. 
Yes it’s a pretty good fit alongside the examples elfkin477 offered whether or not it is strictly a fairytale.
I’d suggest Bridge to Terabithia as another – although I found a particular aspect of the story emotionally distressing. :eek:
Haven’t seen the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are yet, but that would also seem to fit.
Bit unconventional, but Lady in the Water is about storytelling. The tenants of the apartment building become characters in the story.
I can’t seem to find a fae movie I saw a couple of years ago. It was simuliar to pan’s labyrinyth but it was more realistic. It was about a story of a man and his two kids trying to show the existance of faeries small winged ones. They made a faerie home and put stuff in it to lure the faeries in. One day they find a fae in it. Also it was the timeline was back around 1900’s I think somewhere around there. but its more realistic. I know it was made in the 2000’s but no site has any name for it since I don’t know the name.
Zombies in our fairy tales!
Ahem. I read an interesting blog post just the other day about how fairy tales differ from myths. Myths, it claimed, are about superhuman heroes destined for greatness, in which the evil seems to exist almost as a means for the hero to show off. Fairy tales are about ordinary people encountering the world of fairy and how it changes them.
The author made a very entertaining (if not entirely persuasive) case that many modern action movies, including Die Hard, should be watched as fairy tales.
Is it possible that you’re thinking of Fairy Tale: A True Story? It’s about Conan Doyle, I think (I’ve not seen it), and it matches some but not all of your clues.
Well, The Meteor Man’s tagline was “A Magical Inner-City Fairy Tale.”
Having watched the film, I can confirm that this is partially true. It does, in fact, take place in a city. The plot was too disjointed to call it a “tale,” however.
…y’know, if you squint right, and fudge the definition of “short” and “magical,” you could probably consider some action movies as modern “fairy tales.” “Culture hero” tales, at least.
Here’s the blog that analyzes Die Hard as a fairy tale. It’s a fun read.
Another cheaty addition to the list is the weird and wonderful In the Company of Wolves. The vast majority of the story happens in a nonspecific fairytale village, but there’s a framing story set in modern times. It’s a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.
Oh–if we cheat by including television, the show Dollhouse has some pretty strong callbacks to Sleeping Beauty. One episode in particular has a lovely multilevel Briar Rose storyline going on.